Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/166

106 eight annas per month, and in this case the patron professes the intention to have the scholars hereafter taught Persian and Bengali. In another the patron merely lodges, feeds, and clothes, the teacher who receives neither fixed allowance nor fees. In three instances the only remuneration the teacher receives is a salami, or present of five or six rupees, from each scholar when he finally leaves school. In two instances the teachers have small farms from which they derive the means of subsistence in addition to their gains as Mollas. They give instruction either in their own houses, or in school-houses, which are also applied to the purposes of prayer and hospitality and of assembly on occasions of general interest.

No institutions can be more insignificant and useless, and in every respect less worthy of notice, than these Arabic schools, viewed as places of instruction; but, however worthless in themselves, they have a certain hold on the Native mind, which is proved by the increased respect and emolument as Mollas, expected and acquired by some of the teachers on account of the instruction they give; the expense incurred by others of them in erecting school-houses; and by the general employment by the Musalman population of those who receive and communicate the slender education which these schools bestow. In the eye of the philanthropist or the statesman no institution, however humble, will be overlooked, by which he may hope beneficially to influence the condition of any portion of mankind; and it is just in proportion to the gross ignorance of the multitude that he will look with anxiety for any loop-holes by which he may find an entracneentrance [sic] to their understandings—some institutions, which are held by them in veneration and which have hitherto served the cause of ignorance, but which he may hope with discretion to turn to the service of knowledge. I do not despair that means might be employed, simple, cheap, and inoffensive, by which even the teachers of these schools might be reared to qualify themselves for communicating a much higher grade of instruction to a much greater number of learners without divesting them of any portion of the respect and attachment of which they are now the objects.

4. Elementary Persian and Bengali Schools.—The schools in which both Bengali and Persian are taught are two; in one with, and in the other without, the formal reading of the Koran. The two schools contain 30 scholars; one five and the other 25. The period of study is in one case stated to be from 6 to 18 years of age, making 12 years; and in the other from 7 to 23, making 16. The teachers are—one a somewhat intelligent Brahman, and the other a Kath-Molla rather better instructed than others of the same class. The remuneration of the former consists entirely of fees—one anna, two annas, and four annas being charged respectively in three grades of Bengali writing; and four annas, eight annas, and one rupee in three stages of Persian reading, the income from both sources averaging seven rupees eight annas per month. The