The ancient Laws of Manu described various prohibitions on blind people, who are considered to be afflicted as a result of misdeeds in a previous life. Modern terms like 'visually challenged' would probably not have pleased Kautilya. Nevertheless, early literature celebrates some individual social workers whose mission was to feed blind and other disabled people. As in China, Indian history celebrates a small number of outstanding blind people. One of the best known is the 16th century poet Sur Das, possibly a court musician under the emperor Akbar.
Credible material is harder to distinguish from legend, and dating is often very difficult.
By the 19th century, English language sources are dominant, and some of them begin to reflect technical progress occurring in Europe, in education for blind people. The weakness of currently available historical sources in Chinese and South Asian languages, and the lack of European-language material in Asia, is suggested by unsatisfactory historical notes in recent publications, based on modern authorities. These dates and names are muddled or mistaken, or both. The start of services for blind people in India is given by almost all textbooks, mistakenly, as being in 1886 or 1887, at Amritsar. The blind historian R.S. Chauhan, of India's National Institute for the Visually Handicapped, recently tried to probe a little deeper, but reports his frustration at the dearth of materials.