Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/294

234 is between Hindus and Musalmans. The following are the results at one view:—

The account given in the Second Report of the classes of Hindu society to which those families belong that give domestic instruction to the children is, I believe, in general correct, viz., zemindars and talookdars, shop-keepers and traders, gomashtas and mandals, pandits and priests; but I have been led to conclude that the pandits or learned brahmans constitute a much larger proportion than any other class and probably than all the other classes put together. Few of them send their children to Bengali or Hindi schools where accounts are the chief subject of instruction. Most content themselves with giving their children a knowledge of mere reading and writing at home which is the sole qualification to enable them to begin the study of Sanscrit.

Seventh.—With regard to the subject matter of domestic instruction, the mere reading and writing of the vernacular language is all that is taught in the families of brahman pandits, but in other Hindu families I have found Persian taught. Thus in three families belonging to one village I found three boys who had completed their Bengali education, receiving under the domestic roof instruction in Persian. In another village, of five children who were receiving, domestic instruction one was learning Persian and four Bengali. Again, seven boys in one village who were receiving domestic instruction were the sons of Kath Mollas, and were merely taught the formal reading of the Koran; while four Musalman children in another village were taught Bengali reading and writing. There can be no doubt that the instruction given at home is in general more crude and imperfect, more interrupted and desultory, than that which is obtained in the common schools.

The state of school-instruction and of domestic instruction shows the nature and amount of the means employed to instruct