Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/184

124 1. The thirteen schools of general literature are Nos. 25, 45, 72 (a), 86 (a), 111, 143, 279 (b), 279 (d), 279 (e), 328, 374 (b), 374 (c), and 477, of Table III.; and they contain 121 students, of whom 51 belong to the villages in which the schools are situated and 70 to other villages. The age at which they enter on their studies varies from seven to fourteen, and that at which they leave college varies from twenty to thirty-two, the whole period of scholastic study thus varying from eleven to twenty-two years. The teachers, according to their own account, receive throughout the year various sums as presents, which average per month the lowest two rupees and the highest thirty rupees, and this in an average of the whole gives more than eleven rupees a month to each, without taking into account one of the number who is superannuated and receives nothing at all. All the students of a school of general literature receive throughout the year various sums which average the lowest four annas and the highest four rupees per month; and this in an average of the whole gives one rupee eleven annas per month to each institution. The total expense incurred by a student in copying the books used in a course of instruction in this department of learning is stated to vary from one to thirty-six rupees. The average in twelve of these thirteen schools is about thirteen rupees to each student for the cost of books in a whole course which makes the annual expense about a rupee.

The youths who commence the study of Sanscrit are expected to have acquired either at home or in a Bengali school merely a knowledge of Bengali writing and reading and a very slight acquaintance with the first rules of arithmetic, viz., addition and subtraction, without a knowledge of their applications. Hence learned Hindus having entered with these superficial acquirements and at an early age on the study of Sanscrit, and having devoted themselves almost exclusively to its literature, are ignorant of almost every thing else.

The studies embraced in a full course of instruction in general literature are grammar, lexicology, poetry and the drama, and rhetoric, the chief object of the whole being the knowledge of language as an instrument for the communication of ideas.

On entering a school of learning a student is at once put to the study of Sanscrit grammar. Grammar is a favorite study in this district and the most extensive and profound treatises on it in the Sanscrit language are those in most general use. In the thirteen schools of this class there are four different grammars used.  being taught in six, the Kalapa in two, the Mugdha-Bodha in three, and the Ratnamala in two. In teaching Panini the first work employed is the Bhasha Vritti a commentary by FurusottamaPurusottama [sic] Deva on Panini’s rules, omitting those which are peculiar to the dialect of the Vedas. This is followed by the study of the Nyasa, an exposition of the Kasica Vritti,