Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/315

310 uninstructed villagers, who, whatever their other virtues, are not remarkable for habits of accuracy and precision, they would be frequently apt to include under this (assumed) age, both adults above and children below it, unless he had stimulated and aided their attention by requiring separate and distinct statements of the number of persons above 14 and below 5.” In order, therefore, to ensure the strict accuracy of the information relative to the number of the juvenile population or children between 14 and 5 years of age, rigid inquiries, for the sake of comparison and correction, were instituted into the numbers of the infant and adult population, or persons below 5 and above 14. In like manner, for similar or other reasons, as well as in order to be enabled to present a full and finished portraiture of the complex subject of education generally, as respects the matter and manner of instruction, the lingual media of its communication, the qualifications and circumstances of the teachers, the facilities and advantages enjoyed by different classes and neighbourhoods, Mr. Adam resolved to inquire into and report on all manner of details, calculated in any way, directly or indirectly, to illumine or illustrate his leading design. He also wisely judged that the particularity and minuteness of the points of research constituted “an important guard against mistake and error on the part of the agents employed, since the multiplication of details is the multiplication of the means of comparison, and thereby of the means of checking oversight, culpable neglect, or intentional misrepresentation.”

With sound and sober views like these, the first object to which he directed his attention was the preparation of the forms in which he desired to embody the information to be collected; and in passing from district to district he continued to improve these, according as experience, reflection, or local circumstances suggested. His own account of the language and contents of these forms is as follows:—

“The language in which the forms were prepared was Bengali, Hindi, or Urdu, and the character respectively Bengali, Nagari, or Persian, determined in part by the prevailing language and character of the district where they were to be used, and in part by the attainments of the class of persons in each district who offered their services to me. In the Bengal districts Bengali was chiefly used, but in the city of Moorshedabad I found it necessary to have recourse partially to the Urdu language and Persian character. In South Behar I deemed it advisable to employ the Hindi language and the Nagari character, and in Tirhoot the Urdu language and the Persian character. I believe that in the latter districts I should have experienced fewer difficulties, if I had adopted both the Persian language and character; for those of my agents who were acquainted with Hindi only, although very steady and industrious, were peculiarly obtuse and unintelligent, and those who understood Persian were continually diverging into the use of that language in their