Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/345

340 {| align=center width=50% cellpadding="0" cellspacing="4"
 * || colspan="3" |  || colspan="3"  |
 * || Hindu. || Musalman. || Total. || Hindu. || Musalman. || Total.
 * | City of Moorshedabad || 147 || 69 || 216 || 195 || 105 || 300
 * | Thana Daulatbazar || 201 || 53 || 254 || 265 || 61 || 326
 * | Thana Nanglia || 197 || 10 || 207 || 267 || 18 || 285
 * | Thana Culna || 414 || 61 || 475 || 595 || 81 || 676
 * | Thana Jehanabad || 295 || 65 || 360 || 435 || 104 || 539
 * | Thana Bhawara || 223 || 12 || 235 || 275 || 13 || 288
 * }
 * | Thana Nanglia || 197 || 10 || 207 || 267 || 18 || 285
 * | Thana Culna || 414 || 61 || 475 || 595 || 81 || 676
 * | Thana Jehanabad || 295 || 65 || 360 || 435 || 104 || 539
 * | Thana Bhawara || 223 || 12 || 235 || 275 || 13 || 288
 * }
 * | Thana Bhawara || 223 || 12 || 235 || 275 || 13 || 288
 * }
 * }

The state of learned education may be considered with reference to the two great divisions of the population, the Musalmans and the Hindus. Of the former, the grand media of instruction are the Persian and the Arabic; of the latter, the Sanskrit. The schools or colleges in which these are taught claim a separate notice.

1. Persian Schools.—While Bengali and Urdu are the languages of ordinary conversation with the great mass of the Muhammadan population, it is easy to see why Persian must have peculiar attractions for the educated. It is the language of their popular literature, science, and philosophy. It is the language of “the former conquerors and rulers of Hindustan, from whom they have directly or indirectly sprung, and the memory both of a proud ancestry and of a past dominion—the loyalty which attaches itself rather to religion and to race than to country,—attract them to its cultivation.” Apart from such motives, however, the importance given to the Persian language, under the Mogul Sovereigns, and till recently under the British Government, in the administration of justice and police, and in the collection of the revenue, must have exerted no inconsiderable influence. And, in the case of the Hindus, that consideration must have had almost conclusive weight. For it is a remarkable fact, that though, as regards the Hindus, the Persian be altogether a foreign language, the number of Hindu scholars in the Persian schools considerably exceeds that of the Musalman pupils; there being, in the five districts visited by Mr. Adam, 2,096 of the former, and only 1,558 of the latter. This is a fact which can only be accounted for in one way. It is the effect of the artificial stimulus supplied by the long, and until very recently, the almost exclusive use of the Persian in the ordinary routine of Government and local administration. And, as it has