Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/187

Rh in order to complete with another teacher a course of study in general literature. The majority of law-students, however, begin and end their studies in general literature to whatever extent they may desire to proceed with a professor of that branch of learning, and afterwards resort to a teacher of law for instruction in his peculiar department. On those occasions on which the study of the law is specially directed to be suspended as on the first, eighth, and thirtieth of the waxing and waning of the moon, when it thunders, &c., &c., the students most commonly revert to their studies in general literature which at such times are not prohibited.

The compilation of  on every branch of Hindu law, comprised in twenty-eight books, is almost exclusively studied in this district. It consists, according to Mr., of texts collected from the institutes attributed to ancient legislators, with a gloss explanatory of the sense, and reconciling seeming contradictions. Of the twenty-eight books those are almost exclusively read which prescribe and explain the ritual of Hinduism. The first book invariably read is that on lunar days; and this is followed by the others without any fixed order of succession, such as those on marriage, on penance, on purification, on obsequies, on the intercalary month of the Hindu calendar, &c.; but the number of books read is seldom more than ten and never exceeds twelve, and is sometimes not more than four, three, and even two Raghunandana’s treaties on inheritance and on the same subject, are also taught by one or two Pundits.

3. The two schools of logic are 9 (b), and 86 (b), of Table III., containing each four students, of whom two are Natives and six strangers to the villages in which the schools are situated. The age of commencing study is ten or twelve and that of leaving college twenty-four or thirty-two, the course of study taking up from twelve to twenty-two years which must be understood, as in the preceding case of law-schools, to include the preliminary studies in grammar, &c. Of these schools the teacher of one receives about twenty-five rupees a month in presents and his pupils two rupees; and the teacher of the other eight rupees a month and his pupils one. The expenditure of a student in the former for books during the whole course is stated to be about fourteen rupees, and that of a student in the latter about fifty rupees; the difference being probably occasioned by the circumstance that in the one case family-copies of books are used which are not possessed in the other.

The course of instruction in logic embraces the reading and explanation of the following works, viz., Bhasha Parichheda; an introduction to the system of logic, with definitions of terms, qualities, and objects; Vyapti Panchaka on the necessary or inherent qualities of objects; Sinha Vyaghra, a supplement to the preceding; Vyaddhikaranadharmabachinabhaba on the same subject;