Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/322

Rh is the current spoken language of the educated Musalmans of Bengal and Behar, it is never employed in the schools as the medium or instrument of written instruction. Bengali school-books are employed by the Hindus of Bengal, and Hindi school-books by the Hindus of Behar; but, although Urdu is more copious and expressive, more cultivated and refined than either, and possesses a richer and more comprehensive literature, Urdu school-books are wholly unknown. It is the language of conversation in the daily intercourse of life and in the business of the world, and it is the language also of oral instruction for the explanation of Persian and Arabic; but it is never taught or learned for its own sake or for what it contains. It is acquired in a written form only indirectly and at second-hand through the medium of the Persian, whose character it has adopted, and from which it has derived almost all its vocables; and it is employed as a written language chiefly in popular poetry and tales and in female correspondence, and often also in the pulpit.” Educated Musalmans, on the other hand, learn to speak and write the Bengali; and even several low castes of Hindus, occupying entire villages in various directions and amounting to several thousand individuals, whose ancestors three or four generations ago emigrated from the western provinces, have found it necessary to combine the use of Bengali with the Hindi, their mother-tongue. It thus appears that in the provinces of Bengal proper, the Bengali may justly be described as the universal language of vernacular instruction.

2. The School-Houses.—The school-house, where there happens to be one, is sometimes built at the expense of the teacher; sometimes at the expense of some comparatively wealthy person whose son attends school; sometimes by general subscription, the teacher contributing a little, the scholars aiding by their labour in bringing material from the jungle, and some benevolent person granting a donation of land, of money, or of materials. Such a house is always thatched; the walls consisting of mud, or of branches and leaves of the palm and sal tree interleaved. And of so humble a description is it, that, in addition to the personal labour of the pupils, it is erected at a cost averaging from rs. 1-4 to 10. But it must be specially noted, that, in the great majority of instances, there is no school-house at all; that is, there are no school-houses built for and exclusively appropriated to these vernacular schools. With some slight additions, taken from other parts of his report, the following is Mr. Adam’s account of the matter:—

“The apartments or buildings in which the scholars assemble would have been erected, and would continue to be applied to other purposes, if there vol. ii.