Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/369

Rh of the national character which is affected by the present neglected state of learning in the East. The ignorance of the natives in the different classes of society, arising from want of proper education is generally acknowledged. This defect not only excludes them as individuals from the enjoyment of all those comforts and benefits which the cultivation of letters is naturally calculated to afford, but, operating as it does throughout almost the whole mass of the population, tends materially to obstruct the measures adopted for their better government. Little doubt can be entertained that the prevalence of the crimes of perjury and forgery so frequently noticed in the official reports is, in a great measure, ascribable both in the Mohammadans and Hindus to the want of due instruction in the moral and religious tenets of their respective faiths. It has been even suggested, and apparently not without foundation, that to this uncultivated state of the minds of the natives is, in a great degree, to be ascribed the prevalence of those crimes which were recently so great a scourge to the country. The latter offences against the peace and happiness of society have indeed for the present been materially checked by the vigilance and energy of the Police, but it is probably only by the more general diffusion of knowledge among the great body of the people that the seeds of these evils can be effectually destroyed.”

The Minute then proceeds to recommend certain measures consisting in the reform of the Hindu College at Benares and the Mohammadan College at Calcutta, and the establishment of two new Hindu Colleges, one at Nudiya and the other in Tirhoot; and of two new Mohammadan Colleges, one at Bhaugulpore and the other at Jaunpoor. The cost of the two new Hindu Colleges was estimated at sicca rupees 25,618 per annum. The recommendations have been, in a great measure, superseded by subsequent arrangements, but some of them contain useful hints which may still be turned to account,—one is that pensions should be granted to distinguished teachers on condition that they deliver instructions to pupils at their own houses, another is that public disputations should be held annually at which prizes, rewards, and literary honors should be conferred on such of the students as shall have manifested the greatest proficiency. Both are judiciously adapted to Hindu usages.

With apparent reference to this Minute of 1811, it was enacted in the 53rd George III., Cap. 155, Section 43, “that it shall be lawful for the Governor General in Council to direct that out of any surplus which may remain of the rents, revenues, and profits arising from the said territorial acquisitions after defraying the expenses of the military, civil, and commercial establishments, and paying the interest of the debt in manner hereinafter provided, a sum of not less than one lakh of rupees in each year shall be set apart and applied to the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the