Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/135

Rh devoting themselves to the buisnessbusiness [sic] of instruction, or they may even betake themselves to the degardingdegrading [sic] affairs of the world without forfeiting the property. Very much, however, to the credit of the Brahmans, such a neglect is not usual, and one son of the family continues generally to profess the instruction of youth. If there are other sons they follow their natural inclination. With such a system, however liberal it may be in appearance, and to whatever merit the individual professors are justly entitled, it must be evident that the work of education will go on but slowly. It is even to be feared that it would altogether stop, were it not for the charity which usually follows considerable reputation as a teacher.

Students usually commence the study of the Sanskrit language about twelve years of age, after they have been instructed in the knowledge taught in the elementary schools. The principal studies are, as elsewhere in Bengal, grammar, law, and metaphysics, and less frequently the philosophical theology of the veds, the ritual of modern Hindooism, and astronomy, to which may be added medicine or rather magic.

The Vaidyas or medical tribe, and even some rich Kayasthas, are permitted to study such portions of Sanskrit literature as have been composed by wise men; but they are excluded from whatever is supposed to be of divine origin and authority. Dr. Buchanan remarks that the exclusiveness with which Sanskrit learning has been appropriated to the sacred tribe may have tended to increase the general ignorance; but that there can be no doubt that those who possess it enjoy very considerable advantages over their countrymen. The Brahmans generally speaking have an intelligence and acuteness far beyond other Hindoos; and he further thinks that they are subject to fewer vices, and that those persons will be found to approach nearest their good qualities who are admitted even to the porch of science. Here as well as elsewhere it will be found that although intellectual cultivation and moral excellence are neither identical nor always concomitant, yet the addiction to intellectual pursuits and enjoyments, cœteris paribus, leads to the elevation and improvement of the moral character. Amongst the multiplied means, therefore, which civilization and philanthropy will suggest for the reformation of a whole people, let us not altogether neglect one of which, however unfamiliar it may be to our conceptions, experience has established the utility, and which has in fact been the salt of the earth, preserving the country for centuries past amid general debasement and corruption from total ignorance and depravation.

It does not appear that there is any school in which Arabic or the sciences of the Mahomedans are taught,—a remarkable fact respecting a populous district in which so large a proportion of the inhabitants is Mahomedan.