Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/223

Rh arithmetical rules of Subhankar were employed in 32 schools. The Guru Dakshina, another doggerel composition which is sung by the elder boys of a school from house to house to elicit donations for their master, was taught in three schools. In addition to these vernacular works, a small portion of the Sanscrit vocabulary of Amara Singh was found to be in use in one Bengali school; in another a work called Sabda Subanta, containing the rules of Sanscrit orthography, the permutations of letters in combination, and examples of the declension of nouns; and in 14 schools the Sanscrit verses of Chanakya, containing the praises of learning and precepts of morality, were read or committed to memory. All the preceding works, both vernacular and Sanscrit, were taught either from manuscripts or memoriter; but in five schools the Shishu Bodh was employed, a modern compilation in print, containing Subhankar, Chanakya, and Guru Dakshina. One teacher I found in possession of the following works in manuscript, which he professed to employ for the instruction of his scholars; viz., the arithmetic of Ugra Balaram, consisting of practical and imaginary examples which are worked; the modes of epistolary address by the same author; Subhankar; Saraswati Bandana; and Aradhan Das’s Man Bhanjan or Anger Removed, and Kalanka Bhanjan or Disgrace Removed, both relating to the loves of Radha and Krishna. In addition to the preceding, which were all in Bengali, he had also in Sanscrit the verses of Chanakya and the conjugation of the substantive verb bhu. Another teacher had the following printed works, viz., Hitopadesh, a Serampore school-book; the School book Society’s Nitikatha or Moral Instructions, 1st Part, 3rd Edition, 1818; the same Society’s Instructions for modelling and conducting Schools, 1819; Do.’s Geography, Chapter III. Introduction to Asia, 1819; Jyotis Bibaran, a Serampore school-book on astronomy; the seven first numbers of the Serampore Digdarsan or India Youth’s Magazine; and a Serampore missionary tract called Nitivakya, This person was formerly in the employment of a European gentleman who supported a Bengali school subsequently discontinued, and the books remaining in the teacher’s hands are preserved as curiosities, or as heir-looms to be admired, not used.

The seventeen thanas enumerated in Section IV. comprise the whole of this district and contain 412 vernacular schools, of which 407 are Bengali and 5 are reckoned as Hindi schools, but in fact Hindi is exclusively taught in one only, and in the remaining four both Bengali and Hindi are taught. In one school the Hindi language is written in the Bengali as well as in the Nagari characters. Hindi instruction, even to this limited extent, is in demand only in one thana, that of Deoghur, which is the most north-westerly of