Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/158

98 the remotest allusion to English practices or modes of calculation. A recent native editor has deemed it requisite to remedy this defect by a supplement.

It has been already mentioned that there are four different stages in a course of Bengali instruction. The first period seldom exceeds ten days, which are employed in teaching the young scholars to form the letters of the alphabet on the ground with a small stick or slip of bambu. The sand-board is not used in this district, probably to save expense. The second period, extending from two and a half to four years according to the capacity of the scholar, is distinguished by the use of the palm-leaf as the material on which writing is performed. Hitherto the mere form and sound of the letters have been taught without regard to their size and relative proportion; but the master with an iron-style now writes on the palm-leaf letters of a determinate size and in due proportion to each other, and the scholar is required to trace them on the same leaf with a reed-pen and with charcoal-ink which easily rubs out. This process is repeated over and over again on the same leaf until the scholar no longer requires the use of the copy to guide him in the formation of the letters of a fit size and proportion, and he is consequently next made to write them on another leaf which has no copy to direct him. He is afterwards exercised in writing and pronouncing the compound consonants, the syllables formed by the junction of vowels with consonants, and the most common names of persons. In other parts of the country, the names of castes, rivers, mountains, &c., are written as well as of persons; but here the names of persons only are employed as a school-exercise. The scholar is then taught to write and read, and by frequent repetition he commits to memory the Cowrie Table, the Numeration Table as far as 100, the Katha Table, (a land-measure table,) and the Ser Table, (a dry-measure table.) There are other tables in use elsewhere which are not taught in the schools of this district. The third stage of instruction extends from two to three years which are employed in writing on the plantain-leaf. In some districts the tables just mentioned are postponed to this stage, but in this district they are included in the exercises of the second stage. The first exercise taught on the plantain-leaf is to initiate the scholar into the simplest forms of letter-writing, to instruct him to connect words in composition with each other, and to distinguish the written from the spoken forms of Bengali vocables. The written forms are often abbreviated in speech by the omission of a vowel or a consonant, or by the running of two syllables into one, and the scholar is taught to use in writing the full not the abbreviated forms. The correct orthography of words of Sanscrit origin which abound in the language of the people, is beyond the reach of the ordinary class of teachers. About the same time the scholar is taught the rules of arithmetic, beginning with