Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/168

108 who do not go beyond the porch, by association, attach to the one some portion of the respect which strictly belongs only to the other. It would thus appear that the associations, literary and religious, that connect Persian with Arabic, come in aid of the more general cultivation of the former tongue by Musalmans. But Persian in itself has attractions to educated Musalmans. The language of conversation with them is the Urdu or Hindustani which acknowledges the Persian as its parent, and although the Urdu has a copious literature, that literature is chiefly poetical, and it is only from the Persian that educated Musalmans have hitherto derived that instruction in the knowledge of accounts, of epistolary communication, &c,, to which they attach the greatest importance. They teach it to their children, therefore, because it is really the most useful language to which they have access. The recollections belonging to this language still further endear it to Musalmans. It is the language of the former conquerors and rulers of Hindustan from whom they have directly or indirectly sprung, and the memory both of a proud ancestry and of a past dominion—the loyalty which attaches itself rather to religion and to race than to country—attract them to its cultivation. These motives, or motives akin to these, it seems probable induced Dost Mahomed Khan (No. 3), Karim Ali Shah (No. 166), and Musafir-ool-Islam at Kusbeh Bagha, to promote the study of Persian in this district. But even in these cases the importance given to the Persian language in the administration of justice and police and in the collection of the revenue, has had considerable influence; and in other cases, as in Nos. 40 and 100, that consideration has probably exclusive weight. In the two latter the sole or chief patrons of the schools are Hindu landholders or farmers who have no conceivable motive to teach this language to their children, except with a view to the use to which they may hereafter apply it in conducting suits in the Company’s courts, or in holding communications with public officers; unless we take further into account the superior respectability and aptness for business which those possess who have received a Persian education—an advantage, however, which is connected with the preference given to it in the courts. Some Hindu landholders and other respectable Natives have expressed to me a desire to have Persian instruction for their children, but they apparently had no other object than to qualify them to engage in the business of life, which, unhappily in their case, is for the most part identical with the business of the courts.

Upon the whole, apart from the courts, the Persian language has a very feeble hold upon this district, and it would not be difficult not merely to substitute English for it, but to make English much more popular. Some of the considerations by which Persian is recommended might be brought with much more force in favor of English, if it could be made more accessible, and the motives derived from other considerations which are in their