Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/114

54 benefit to those students who have no other fixed means of support. On Mr. Wilson’s report it was determined to continue the allowance of rupees 100 per month to the petitioners.

Little is said by any of the authorities to which I have referred of the schools of learning in this district beyond the town of Nuddea; but there can be no doubt that such exist at Santipore, Kishnaghur and other places within the district. Mr. Ward mentions transiently that, at Koomaru Hutta and Bhatpara, villages in this district, there are perhaps seven or eight such schools. At Santipore there was formerly a small Government endowment which appears to be at present in abeyance. In 1824, an application was made through the Collector of Nuddea to the Board of Revenue by Devi Prasad Nyayuvachaspati Bhattacharyya, as the brother of Kali Prasad Tarkasiddhanta Bhattacharyya, who had died in the preceding year, for an annual allowance or pension of sicca rupees 156-11-10, in consideration of his keeping a seminary in the town of Santipore. Enquiries were made as to the character of the deceased who is stated to have been a pundit of great ability, having when he died about 10 students under tuition. It also appeared by the evidence produced on the occasion that the brother and present claimant assisted the deceased in the tuition of his students who resided with him, and that they read the dharma shastra or works on law. The information thus produced not seeming to the Board of Revenue satisfactory, the Collector was directed to make further enquiries respecting the origin and the extent of the endowment and the service rendered, but his final report does not appear on the records.

I have already mentioned the nature of the report, made by the Judge and Magistrate of this district in 1801, that there were no seminaries within the district in which either the Hindoo or Mahomedan law was taught, and I have met with no direct evidence to establish the existence of any Mahomedan institutions. With a considerable proportion, however, of Mahomedan population it seems exceedingly improbable that they should be entirely destitute of such institutions of education as are found to exist in other districts.

Native Female Schools.—At Kishnaghur in 1834 the Calcutta Ladies’ Society had Native female school at which forty girls of good family attended; and at Nuddea there was a similar school containing about forty scholars. But the schools at both these places were about to be abandoned from want of funds, no sufficient local aid being afforded them.

Population.—In 1801, the total population of the district was computed at 938,712 inhabitants, one-half Hindoo and the other