Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/173

Rh year of the Shah’s reign which, calculating from his first proclamation of himself as Emperor in the life-time of his father, would be 1050, and from his full accession to the throne, after the death of his father, 1056 of the Hijri. These years correspond with 1640 and 1646 of the Christian era, which would make this endowment rather less than 200 years old. This, however, does not appear to have been the original grant, for it professes only to confirm former grants of the Shah’s predecessors, in virtue of which Maulana Sheikh Abdul Wahab then possessed 42 villages yielding annually 8,000 Rupees, which are ordered in the grant of Shah Jehan to be considered as Madad-i-Maash, or means of subsistence for his own use and that of his brothers, children, servants, and dependants. The title of Maulana given to Sheik Abdul Wahab, the highest honorary title bestowed on men of learning amongst Musalmans, implies that it was because of his learning, for the encouragement of learning, and to assist him in the means he had already adopted to promote it, that the grant was made and confirmed. Such appears to have been the interpretation put upon it by every successive inheritor of the grant, for they have all maintained the madrasa in a more or less efficient state, even as at present when their own family has ceased to afford learned men to conduct it. The management, however, seems to have been entirely left in their hands without any express reservation of power on the part of the State to interfere. One of the present incumbents, Musafir-ul-Islam, states that from a personal feeling of hostility to the family, a part of the property was resumed by one of the Moghul governors of Bengal, and an assessment imposed of 872 Rupees per annum, which continues to be paid to the British Government. I learn also from the Commissioner of the Division, that this endowment has been recently investigated and confirmed under Regulation II. of 1819.

The present total income of the estate is stated to be 8,000 Rupees, exactly the value mentioned in Shah Jehan’s grant, a coincidence which makes the accuracy of the information doubtful, and the doubt is confirmed by the Collector who values the estate at upwards of 30,000 Rupees per annum. The attempt to conceal, the real value of the endowment may be ascribed either to an innocent or a guilty timidity; and in like manner I am uncertain whether to attribute to a weak or a corrupt motive an endeavor made to bribe my maulavi and thereby to influence, as was hoped, the tenor of this report. There may have been either a consciousness of something needing concealment, or merely an anxiety to avoid an investigation supposed to entail expense and trouble.

The purposes to which the property is applied are four. The first is the maintenance of the Khunkar families, the descendants of Sheik Abdul Wahab; the name Khunkar applied to them being probably a corruption of Akhun, teacher, with an arbitrary