Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/226

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This is the first district in which my arrangements enabled me to obtain a complete view of the amount and distribution of vernacular instruction, with a confidence nearly approaching to certainty that no important omission had been made, from the number of scholars of the brahman caste, we may infer not only the large number of brahman families in the district, but also, in some measure, the extent to which they have engaged in the worldly employments prohibited to their caste. Another circumstance worthy of notice is the comparatively large number of scholars of the Kalu and Sunri castes, which are not only on religious grounds excluded from association with brahmans, but, according to former custom and usage, were generally deemed unworthy of participating in the advantages of literary instruction even in the humblest forms. The appearance also of the Dom, Keot, Hari, and other low castes in the list of scholars, although in less numbers, affords additional and still stronger illustrations of the increasing desire for instruction and of the unforced efforts to obtain it; for those castes are the lowest of the low, and were formerly as undesirous of instruction in letters as they were deemed unworthy of it. In the only Missionary school of this class in the district there are only two Hindu scholars, one of the Dom and the other of the Hari caste, from which it will be seen that all the other scholars of low caste are found in schools of exclusively native origin and entirely under native management.

In the Hindi schools of this district the wooden board is used, but not the brazen plate to write upon; and in the Bengali schools,