Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/330

 whom we affect to consider barbarians and centuries behind us in civilization, and have attempted to inflict a foreign language on a hundred millions of people! We have even gone beyond our model. On the first conquest of India by the Mohammedans, one party at least—the conquerors—understood the language of the courts of justice; but it has been the pleasure of the English to carry on business and administer justice in a language alike foreign to themselves and to their subjects.” In the same volume, pp. 464-465, Mr. Shore describes the works that he recommends to be translated into the vernacular language and character. They should not, he says, be confined to works of a religious nature, “but the selection should include books of instruction and even amusement. History, geography, elementary works on arts and sciences, would be extremely acceptable to the people.” He proposes also “to prohibit any direct attempts at conversion in the schools established by Government, nor should the study of religious works be compulsory as school-books. Such books should, however, be placed within their reach for all who chose to consult them.”

I will add only one other authority on this subject. Mr., Resident in Nepal, in the preface to his letters addressed to the Editor of the Friend of India, on the pre-eminence of the vernaculars, p. 9, has the following remarks;—“In the most enlightened parts of Europe the general opinion now is that schools for teachers have in the present century created a new era in the practical science of education. Why then is Government inattentive to so noble and successful an experiment? Especially since there is about this method of normal instruction, or teaching of teachers, just that sort of definiteness which may be compassed by limited public funds, with yet a concomitant prospect of great and diffusive benefits to the country from the adoption of the measure. But workmen must have tools; and good workmen, good tools; wherefore, to a nursery for the regular supply of competent vernacular school-masters, should be added one for the equally regular supply of sound books in the three prime vulgar tongues of our presidency, books embodying the substance only of our really useful knowledge, with stimuli and directions for the various sorts of mental exertion; so that in the result there might exist for the people at large the easy and obvious bridge of the vulgar tongue leading from exotic principles to local practices, from European theory to Indian experience.” In support of the principle of drawing on Indian experience, of borrowing the precepts, examples, and illustrations of Indian literature, to recommend to general attention the substance of a higher knowledge, moral and social, as well as physical, Mr. Hodgson urges the following considerations"—“The elemental laws of thought,—including a designation of the necessary boundaries of human inquiry and the best rules of investigation within those limits—the law of population; the philosophy of wealth; the general principles