Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/274

214 instructions beyond the children of four or three families, and often limiting them to two and even one. The effects are waste of power and degradation of character to teachers and taught.

Sixth.—An attempt was made to ascertain the age of each scholar at three separate periods, viz., the age of his entering school or commencing the particular study referred to; his age at the time the school was visited; and the probable age of his leaving school or concluding the particular study in which he was then engaged. The average results are exhibited in the following table, and from the results is shown the average duration of study. At the time the Beerbhoom district was visited, the then actual age only of each scholar was noted without the two other items which are consequently wanting in the table:—

Thus the average duration both of Persian and Arabic study is about eleven or twelve years, the former generally extending to the twentieth! or twenty-first and the latter to the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year of age, affording ample time for the introduction of new or the improvement and extension of old courses of study.

Seventh.—The nature of the instruction given in these institutions may be in some measure estimated by the subjects of the works used as school or text books. In Persian schools elementary and grammatical works, forms of correspondence, and popular poems and tales are chiefly read: occasionally a work on rhetoric or a treatise on theology or medicine is also met with. In the Arabic schools the course of study takes a much wider range. The grammatical works are numerous, systematized, and profound; complete courses of reading on rhetoric, logic, and law are embraced; the external observances and fundamental doctrines of Islam are minutely studied; the works of Euclid on geometry and Ptolemy on astronomy in translation are not unknown; other