Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/358

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 * | Subjects of Study. || Number of Students. || Average age of commencing study. || Average age of completing study.
 * | Grammar || 644 || 11.4 || 20.7
 * | Lexicology || 31 || 15.7 || 17.8
 * | Literature || 90 || 18.6 || 24.9
 * | Rhetoric || 8 || 23.6 || 27.1
 * | Law || 238 || 23.2 || 33.5
 * | Logic || 277 || 17.8 || 29.0
 * | Vedanta || 3 || 24.3 || 34.6
 * | Medicine || 15 || 16.2 || 24.2
 * | Mythology || 43 || 24.6 || 31.6
 * | Astrology || 7 || 23.4 || 30.5
 * | Tantras || 2 || 27.5 || 32.5
 * }
 * | Logic || 277 || 17.8 || 29.0
 * | Vedanta || 3 || 24.3 || 34.6
 * | Medicine || 15 || 16.2 || 24.2
 * | Mythology || 43 || 24.6 || 31.6
 * | Astrology || 7 || 23.4 || 30.5
 * | Tantras || 2 || 27.5 || 32.5
 * }
 * | Astrology || 7 || 23.4 || 30.5
 * | Tantras || 2 || 27.5 || 32.5
 * }
 * | Tantras || 2 || 27.5 || 32.5
 * }

In other districts there are considerable differences as regards the numerical proportion of students pursuing the several branches of learning. Thus, in Tirhoot, while there are only 16 that study logic, there are 53 students of astrology. But, while similar variations will be found in most of the other departments, there is a remarkable uniformity throughout, as respects the average age of commencing and completing the different branches of study. grammarGrammar [sic], lexicology, and literature which includes poetical, dramatic and rhetorical productions, although begun in succession, are generally studied simultaneously; and the same remark is in some measure applicable to law, logic, and other higher departments. A glance at the foregoing table, will at once show that the average of the whole period of scholastic study varies from twelve to twenty-two years!—a prodigious proportion of the best and most active years of one’s life, if we take into account the nature and amount of the acquisitions gained!

In estimating the value of these institutions, it is important to note, that, even if the benefits conferred by them were vastly greater than they really are, these are practically limited to a single class of the community. There is not, Mr. Adam assures us, “any mutual connection or dependence between vernacular and Sanskrit schools. The former are not considered preparatory to the other; nor do the latter profess to complete the course of study which has been begun elsewhere. They are two separate classes of institutions, each existing for distinct classes of society —the one, for the trading and agricultural, and the other, for the religious and learned classes. They are so unconnected that the instruction in Bengali and Hindi, reading and writing, which is necessary at the commencement of a course of Sanskrit study, is seldom acquired in the vernacular schools, but generally under