Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/100

40 maintenance. Sometimes the teacher, in addition to the salary he receives, is fed and clothed by his patron. Such schools have seldom any house built or exclusively appropriated for the use of the teacher and his pupils. The second class of schools is not so numerous as the former, but they afford a better maintenance to the teacher. In general the pupils pay him from four to eight annas per month while they write upon leaves, and from eight annas to one rupee, according to their means, when they write upon paper; in addition to which he also receives one day’s maintenance per month from each pupil. Another perquisite of the teacher is a piece of cloth from each scholar on promotion to a higher class, but this is not one of the conditions of admission, and depends upon the liberality of the parents. The number of scholars in each school of either description averages 30, some schools in populous towns having more, and others in small villages having less. The teachers are either Brahmans or Sudras. If the former are respectable and learned, they gain a comfortable subsistence; but the majority of them do not take sufficient pains to write a neat hand, and they have in general only a superficial acquaintance with arithmetic and accounts. Books are not in use in this class of elementary schools. The instruction comprises writing on the palm-leaf and on Bengalee paper, and arithmetic. As soon as the scholar is able to write a tolerable hand and has acquired some knowledge of accounts, he in general leaves school. In this district they enter school usually at the age of six and remain four or five years.

The indigenous elementary schools amongst Musalmans are for the most part private places of instruction to which a few select pupils are admitted, and the teachers being either in independent circumstances or in the employment of Government, give their instructions gratuitously. Admission is often refused and is always obtained with difficulty, and the instruction given to the favored candidates is very imperfect and desultory. At Pundua, a place formerly of some celebrity in the district, it is said to have been the practice of the Musalman land proprietors to entertain teachers at their own private cost for the benefit of the children of the poor in their neighborhood, ''and it was a rare thing to find an opulent farmer or head of a village who had not a teacher in his employment for that purpose. That class, however, is alleged to have dwindled away and scarcely any such schools are now found to exist''.

Indigenous Schools of Learning.—The number of Hindoo schools of learning in this district is considerable. Mr. Ward in 1818 stated that at Vansvariya, a village not far from the town of Hugly, there were twelve or fourteen colleges, in all of which logic was almost exclusively studied. There were then also seven or eight in the town of Triveni, one of which had been lately taught by Jugannath Tarka Panchanan, supposed to be the most