Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/353

348 feast bestows a gift of money on the teacher, it is always accompanied by a present to the pupil less in amount, but proportioned to the respectability of the teacher’s character and the extent of his attainments. The teacher sometimes takes a favorite pupil more frequently than others, the object being to give a practical proof of the success of his instructions, as well as to accustom the pupil to the intercourse of learned and respectable society. As the student is furnished with instruction, food, and lodging without cost, the only remaining sources of expense to him are his books, clothes, and minor personal expenses, all of which, exclusive of books, are estimated to cost him in no case more, and often less, than seven rupees per annum. His books he either inherits from some aged relative, or, at his own expense and with his own hands, he copies those works that are used in the college as text-books. In the latter case the expense of copying includes the expense of paper, pen, ink, ochre, and oil. The ochre is mixed with the gum of the tamarind seed, extracted by boiling, and the compound is rubbed over the paper, which is thus made impervious to insects, and capable of bearing writing on both sides. The oil is for light, as most of the labour of copying is performed by night, after the studies of the day have been brought to a close. An economical student is sometimes able, with the presents he receives when he accompanies his teacher to assemblies, both to defray these expenses and to relieve the straitened circumstances of his family at a distance. I have learned, on good authority, that ten and even twenty rupees per annum have been saved and remitted by a student to his family; but the majority of students require assistance from their families, although, I am assured, that what they receive probably never in any case exceeds four rupees per annum.”

To the subject-matter of learned instruction, it is scarcely possible, within our narrow limits, to do more than briefly allude. From the preceding statement, it has appeared that there are “three principal classes into which the teachers and schools of Hindu learning are divided. The acquirements of a teacher of logic in general pre-suppose those of a teacher of law; and the acquirements of the latter in general pre-suppose those of a teacher of general literature, who, for the most part, has made very limited attainments beyond those of his immediate class.” As a preliminary remark equally applicable to all the classes, it may be stated, that “the youths who commence the study of Sanskrit are expected to have acquired, either at home or in a Bengali school, merely a knowledge of Bengali writing and reading, and a very slight acquaintance with the rules of arithmetic, viz., addition and subtraction, without a knowledge of their application. Hence, learned Hindus having entered with these superficial acquirements at an early age on the study of Sanskrit, and having devoted themselves almost exclusively to its literature, are ignorant of almost everything else.”

The chief object of the first or lowest department, which is that of philology and general literature, is, “the knowledge of language as an instrument for the communication of ideas.” A full course of instruction in it embraces grammar, the most extensive and profound treatises on which, such as, the