Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/370

310 introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India; and that any schools, public lectures, or other institutions for the purposes aforesaid, which shall be founded at the Presidencies of Fort William, Fort St. George, or Bombay, or in any other part of the British territories in India in virtue of this Act, shall be governed by such regulations as may, from time to time, be made by the said Governor General in Council, subject nevertheless to such powers as are herein vested in the said Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India respecting Colleges and Seminaries: Provided always that all appointments to offices in such schools, lectureships, and other institutions, shall be made by or under the authority of the Governments within which the same shall be situated.” It is perhaps scarcely necessary to remark that the literature to be revived and improved can only be the existing literature; that the learned natives of India to be encouraged can only be those who are already learned, not those who are to become so by the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences; and that, therefore, the sum thus directed to be appropriated is applicable, in part at least, to the revival, improvement, and encouragement of the existing learned institutions of the country.

The late Mr. wrote a paper dated June 19, 1814, entitled “Observations suggested by the provision in the late Act of Parliament for the promotion of science and literature amongst the inhabitants of the British possessions in India.” In these observations Mr. Harington examines at some length the preliminary question whether the English language should be employed as the medium of communicating knowledge to the natives, or whether the vernacular and learned languages of the country are the more appropriate instruments. The following is the conclusion at which he arrives:—“My own idea, on an imperfect consideration of so extensive a subject, is that both of the plans noticed have their advantages and disadvantages; that neither the one nor the other should be exclusively adopted, but that both should be promoted as far as circumstances may admit. To allure the learned natives of India to the study of European science and literature, we must, I think, engraft this study upon their own established methods of scientific and literary instruction; and particularly in all the public colleges or schools maintained or encouraged by Government, good translations of the most useful European compositions on the subjects taught in them, may, I conceive, be introduced with the greatest advantage.”

The somewhat adverse views on this branch of the subject presented by Lord Moira’s Minute already quoted must not be withheld:—“The immediate encouragement,” His Lordship says, “of the superior descriptions of science by any bounty to the existing colleges appears to me a project altogether delusive. I do not believe that in those retreats there remain any embers capable