Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/272

212 which are intimately connected and which almost imperceptibly pass into each other. The Arabic teacher teaches Persian also in the same school and to the same pupils, and an Arabic school is sometimes known from a Persian school only by having a single Arabic scholar studying the most elementary Arabic work, while all the other scholars read Persian. The same scholars who are now studying Arabic formerly read, or may still be reading, Persian in the same school and under the same teacher; and the scholars in an Arabic school who are now reading Persian only will probably in the same school, and under the same teacher, advance to the study of Arabic. The only distinction that can be drawn is that while there is no Arabic teacher who does not or may not teach Persian, there are many Persian teachers who do not and cannot teach Arabic. But the class for which both Persian and Arabic schools exist is the same, and that is the upper class of native society, whether Hindus or Musalmans are the scholars, and whether Persian or Arabic is the language taught. Both languages are foreign, and both classes of schools are inaccessible to the body of the people.

Fourth.—It is a question to what extent Persian and Arabic instruction is directed and sought by Hindus and Musalmans, respectively; and the following table affords some means of estimating their relative proportion by exhibiting the actual number of teachers and scholars belonging to each class:—