Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/238

178 Seventh.—The mutual disposition of Hindus and Musalmans towards each other is not an unimportant element of society in this country, and it may be partly estimated by the state of vernacular instruction. In the Beerbhoom and Burdwan districts there are thirteen Musalman teachers of Bengali schools; in the South Behar and Tirhoot districts there is only one Musalman teacher of a Hindi school, and that one is found in South Behar. In the Beerbhoom and Burdwan districts there are 1,001 Musalman scholars in Bengali schools; and in the South Behar and Tirhoot districts 177 Musalman scholars in Hindi schools, of whom five only are found in Tirhoot. The Musalman teachers have Hindu as well as Musalman scholars; and the Hindu and Musalman scholars and the different castes of the former assemble in the same school-house, receive the same instructions from the same teacher, and join in the same plays and pastimes. The exception to this is found in Tirhoot, where there is not one Musalman teacher of a Hindi school and only five Musalman scholars in the schools of that class. As far as I could observe or learn, the feeling between those two divisions of the population is less amicable in this district than in any of the others I have visited.

Eighth.—The distribution of vernacular instruction amongst the different classes of native society, considered as commercial, as agricultural, or as belonging determinately to neither, may be approximately estimated by a reference to some of the preceding details. Commercial accounts only are chiefly acquired by the class of money-lenders and retail-traders, agricultural accounts only by the children of those families whose subsistence is exclusively drawn from the land, and both accounts by those who have no fixed prospects and who expect to gain their livelihood as writers, accountants, &c. The following table shows the number of schools in which each sort of accounts is taught separately, or both together