Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/257

Rh are Vaishnavas or followers of Chaitanya, and one is a Daivajna or out-caste Brahman—in all 13; and in Burdwan, of 1,358 students 45 are Vaidyas, 11 Daivajnas, and six are Vaishnavas—in all the others in each case being Brahmans. Comparing Bengal and Behar, the former appears to have taken a step in advance of the latter in communicating to some of the inferior castes a portion of the learning which it possesses, but even in Bengal the progress in this direction is not so great as might have taken place without running counter to the opinions and habits of the people. Still it is an advance, and it has been made in Bengal where in the department of vernacular instruction also a corresponding advance has been made, and is making, by the very lowest castes; showing that, while there is no established connection between the two systems of instruction, the same general influences are contributing to the extension of both.

Third.—The teachers and students of Sanscrit schools constitute the cultivated intellect of the Hindu people, and they command that respect and exert that influence which cultivated intellect always enjoys, and which in the present instance they peculiarly enjoy from the ignorance that surrounds them, the general purity of their personal character, the hereditary sacredness of the class to which most of them belong, the sacredness of the learning that distinguishes them, and the sacredness of the functions they discharge as spiritual guides and family priests. The only drawback on the influence they possess is the general, not universal, poverty of their condition, increased by the frequent resumption of former endowments. They are notwithstanding this a highly venerated and influential portion of native society, and although as a body their interests may be opposed to the spread, of knowledge, yet their impoverished circumstances would make them ready instruments to carry into effect any plan that should not assail their religious faith or require from them a sacrifice of principle and character. The numbers of this important class of men in the district visited are here exhibited at one view:—

Fourth.—The most favorable would probably not be a high estimate of the practical utility of the different branches of Sanscrit learning cultivated in these schools, but neither is that learning to be wholly despised. So long as the language shall exist,