Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/88

28 distinctly on the memory. These studies are frequently pursued, especially by the students of logic, till two or three o'clock in the morning.

There are three kinds of colleges in Bengal—one in which chiefly grammar, general literature, and rhetoric, and occasionally the great mythological poems and law are taught; a second, in which chiefly law and sometimes the mythological poems are studied; and a third, in which logic is made the principal object of attention. In all these colleges select works are read and their meaning explained; but instruction is not conveyed in the form of lectures. In the first class of colleges, the pupils repeat assigned lessons from the grammar used in each college, and the teacher communicates the meaning of the lessons after they have been committed to memory. In the others the pupils are divided into classes according to their progress. The pupils of each class having one or more books before them, seat themselves in the presence of the teacher, when the best reader of the class reads aloud, and the teacher gives the meaning as often as asked, and thus they proceed from day to day till the work is completed. The study of grammar is pursued during two, three, or six years, and where the work of is studied, not less than ten, and sometimes twelve, years are devoted to it. As soon as a student has obtained such a knowledge of grammar as to be able to read and understand a poem, a law book, or a work on philosophy, he may commence this course of reading also, and carry on at the same time the remainder of his grammar-studies. Those who study law or logic continue reading either at one college or another for six, eight, or even ten, years. When a person has obtained all the knowledge possessed by one teacher, he makes some respectful excuse to his guide and avails himself of the instructions of another. Mr. Ward, for whom many of the preceding details have been copied, estimates that “amongst one hundred thousand Brahmans, there may be one thousand who learn the grammar of the sunskritu, of whom four or five hundred may read some parts of the kavyu (or poetical literature), and fifty some parts of the ulunkaru (or rhetorical) shastras. Four hundred of this thousand may read some of the smriti (or law works); but not more than ten any part of the tuntrus (or the mystical and magical treatises of modern Hinduism). Three hundred may study the nyayu (or logic), but only five or six the meimangsu (explanatory of the ritual of the veds), the sunkhyu (a system of philosophical materialism) the vedantu (illustrative of the spiritual portions of the veds), the patunjulu (a system of philosophical ascetism), the voisheshika (a system of philosophical anti-materialism), or the veda (the most ancient and sacred writings of Hindoos). Ten persons in this number of Brahmans may become learned in the astronomical shastras, while ten more understand these very imperfectly. Fifty of this thousand may read the shree