Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/175

Rh There is no fixed age for admission or dismission, for beginning or completing the course of study. Students are admitted at the arbitrary pleasure of Musafir-ul-Islam, and they leave sooner or later according to their own caprice. During the period that they are nominally students, their attendance from day to day is equally uncontrolled and unregulated except by their own wishes and convenience. Many of the students are mere children, while others are grown up men. The business of the school commences at six in the morning and continues till eleven, and again at mid-day and continues till four. Every scholar reads a separate lesson to the master, one coming when another withdraws, so that there is a total absence of classification. The weekly periods of vacation are for Arabic students every Tuesday and Friday, and for Persian students every Thursday and Friday; and the annual periods of vacation are the whole of the month Ramzan, ten days for the Mohurram, and five days at four different periods of the year required by other religious observances.

It thus appears that this institution has no organization or discipline and that the course of instruction is exceedingly meagre; and the question arises whether the interference of Government through the General Committee of Public Instruction or in any other way is justifiable; and if so to what useful purposes that interference might be directed. The recent confirmation of this endowment under Regulation II. of 1819 has been mentioned; but as far as I can learn this decision has the effect only of declaring the lands to be Lakhiraj or not liable to assessment by Government without determining the purposes to which their annual profits should be applied. If any of those purposes are of a strictly public nature, the interference of Government in order to secure attention to them is not precluded.

Without going into a verbal discussion of the terms of the royal grant, nothing would seem to be less objectionable than to recognize and confirm in perpetuity the practical interpretation put upon it by every successive holder of the endowment. That interpretation indicates four distinct purposes formerly mentioned, viz., the support of the Khunkar families; the maintenance of public worship; hospitality to the poor and sick; and the promotion of learning. The present holders of the endowment might be reasonably required to separate the funds applicable to the two former purposes which are personal and religious, from those which are applicable to the two latter which are of public and general interest; and after this separation which might be effected by amicable representations of its propriety and advantages, they would remain sole and uncontrolled disposers of the personal and religious fund, and under the control of Government the sole trustees of the public and general fund.

Musafir-ul-Islam, one of the holders of the endowment, at the same time that he stated the total produce of the estate to be