Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/195

Rh amount and so imperfect in their nature, it may appear of little consequence how they are distributed. In point of fact the police sub-division of Nattore is a favorable specimen of the whole district, for it appears to be decidedly in advance of all the other thanas. According to the best information I can collect, Hariyal, Chaugaon, Puthiya, Bhawanigunge, Bilmariya, and Bauleah rank next to Nattore; while Tannore, Manda, Dubalhati, Godagari, Sarda, and Mirgunge are almost entire blanks as to the means of education. If, however, we give the other thanas the advantage, with respect to the means and amount of instruction, of being on an equality with Nattore, and if we assume that the juvenile male population bears the same proportion to the adult male population throughout the district as it does in Nattore, then in the mode before adopted of estimating the total population, eight-times the juvenile population of Nattore will represent the total juvenile population of the district; and it will thus appear that of 181,096 children between fourteen and five throughout the district, 21,152 are receiving some sort of instruction, however imperfect, either at home or at school, and 159,944 are wholly destitute of the means or opportunity of acquiring the simplest elements of education. My own observations and the inquiries I have made of others lead me to believe that this is a more favorable representation of the amount of elementary instruction in the district than strict fact would justify; and yet what a mass of ignorance it exhibits within a comparatively small space, growing up to occupy the place of the ignorance that has gone before it, and destined, it may be feared, to re-produce and perpetuate its own likeness.

The amount of cultivation possessed by the adult male population may be estimated from several details contained in Table I.

The male adult population of Nattore, including all of the male sex who are above fourteen years, that is, who have passed beyond the school-going age, amounts to 59,500; and in this population there are different classes of individuals who have received a greater or less amount of instruction. The first class consists of teachers of schools of learning who we have seen are 39 in number. The extent of their attainments is shown in the account given in Table III. of the institutions which they conduct. In respect of wealth and property they have a comparatively humble place in native society; but in respect of intellectual cultivation and acquired learning, religious authority and moral influence, they hold the first rank. The second class consists of those who have received either a complete or an imperfect learned education, but who have not the means or the ability to establish or conduct a school of learning. They support themselves in general as initiating or family priests; as reciters or interpreters of the puranas, on the occasion of public celebrations by rich families; as the performers of propitiatory rites for averting