Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/208

148 the interior of the district, I fixed upon the police sub-division of Daulatbazar for examination. The most improved mode of investigation to which I had attained in Rajshahi, in respect both of the agents and forms employed, was applied to this thana; but the result disappointed me, for I found at the close of the inquiry that there was not a single Sanscrit or Arabic School in the Daulatbazar thana, although the existence of such institutions in the district was undoubted.

The next district I visited was that of Beerbhoom, and there I adoped a modification of the plan of investigation which spread the inquiry over a much wider surface in an equal period of time, and with equal security for accuracy of detail. In Rajshahi and Moorshedabad, with the sanction of the General Committee, I had limited my investigations to one thana in each district; but it now occurred to me that, as I employed agents in that single thana under my own superintendence in collecting information according to prescribed forms, this plan admitted of simultaneous extension to the other thanas of the same district. Accordingly, having selected one thana as before for special investigation, the results of which would fulfil the instructions I had received from the General Committee, I extended a more limited survey by means of separate agents over all the remaining thanas. The difference was that in the latter the inquiry was confined to the state of school-instruction, whereas in the selected thana it embraced also the state of domestic and adult instruction. For the special and more minute investigation of the selected thana, four, five, and sometimes six agents were employed; and for the more limited survey of the remaining thanas, one agent each was found sufficient. I did not deem it necessary to refer this modification of my plans to the General Committee for their approval, because no part of their instructions was superseded, and the modification consisted only in the additional labour and expense which I imposed on myself. The result was highly satisfactory, for it enabled me to pronounce with confidence on the state of school-instruction not in one thana only, but throughout all the thanas of a district. This extended and comprehensive course of investigation has been pursued in Beerbhoom and BurdawnBurdwan [sic], South Behar and Tirhoot. In the city of Moorshedabad the plan of investigation was made still more comprehensive, the special and minute inquiry into the state both of school-instruction and domestic and adult instruction having been extended to all the nineteen thanas included within the city jurisdiction.

With the exception of four or five waqifkars whom I permitted to accompany me from district to district, and whose superior intelligence compensated in some measure for the want of local experience in the districts where they were strangers, I had to instruct a separate set of persons in each district in a knowledge of