Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/344

Rh generation to generation.” Sometimes the father is the instructor, but quite as often an uncle, or an elder brother. Sometimes a pujari Brahman, or family chaplain, is bound by agreement to employ his leisure hours instructing the children. Sometimes, in villages, in which Mr. Adam could not find a single individual able either to read or write, he was, notwithstanding, assured that the children were not wholly without instruction; and when he asked who taught them, the answer was, “that the gomastha, in his periodical visits for the collection of the master’s rents, gave a few lessons to one or more of the children of the village.”

Since this domestic elementary instruction is, from its very nature, more imperfect and precarious than even the scholastic elementary instruction, and is consequently less esteemed, it may create surprise that it should be allowed to form a substitute for the other at all. The reasons are twofold. In some cases poverty, or inability, to pay for school-instruction is the sole cause of preference. In other instances, the pride or rank of station, of birth and learning, acting also upon circumscribed means, prevents the respective parties from looking beyond their own respective households for the instruction which their children need. Accordingly, the classes of Hindu society to which these families belong, that give domestic instruction to their children, are thus specified by Mr. Adam:—

"“Those who give their children domestic instruction are Zemindars, Talukdars, and persons of some little substance; shopkeepers and traders, possessing some enterprize and forecast in their callings; Zemindar’s agents or factors (Gomashtas), and heads of villages (Mandals), who know practically the advantage of writing and accounts; and sometimes persons of straitened resources but respectable character, who have been in better circumstances, and wish to give their children the means of making their way in the world. Pandits, too, who intend that their children should pursue the study of Sanskrit, begin by instructing them at home in the rudiments of their mother tongue; and Brahmans, who have themselves gone through only a partial course of Sanskrit reading, seek to qualify their children by such instruction as they can give for the office and duties of a family priest, or spiritual guide.”"

In connection with this subject, there is one other point worthy of note. It has already been shown, in the case of school-instruction, how much, proportionably, the Hindu pupils in numbers preponderate over the Musalman. The following table will exhibit, at one view, a specimen of similar preponderance, as regards domestic instruction:—