Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/106

 practised in arithmetical calculation; the clerk who should qualify himself for subordinate employment in a private or a public office; the artisan, the skilled workman, the manufacturer, who should acquire the technical knowledge necessary for success in his craft. For the secondary or middle class school the standard must be so arranged as to suit, firstly, the general wants which are common to all the above-mentioned sections of society, and secondly, the special wants of each section.

The instruction will, indeed, be partly given in English, but mainly in the vernacular. The merits or the defects in this instruction will show the manner in which we sustain the acknowledged principle that, while English instruction is offered to the Natives, they should be thoroughly grounded in their own language. We duly perceive that, while many Natives learn English—the more the better—still many Natives, if they are to be educated at all, can obtain their education only through the medium of their own vernacular. Hence, a new vernacular literature has to be created; and such a creation, if it be fully completed under our auspices, will be among the most enduring monuments of British rule in Western India. Already a good beginning has been made by several highly-qualified Native gentlemen. On various branches of useful knowledge, books will be written in the vernacular languages of this Presidency, and in a plain, practical style, some of which will be abstracts, others translations, in extenso, of English works. Some of these books, too, will be original works by Native authors who, having mastered for themselves the subject in hand, will expound it in their own Oriental mode of thought and expression for the benefit of their countrymen. We should afford the utmost incitement to Natives to attempt this original composition, as affording the best scope for that sort of independent self-sufficing ability which we most desire to evoke among them. Such labours do as much good, to the writers as to those for whose instruction the books are written, and will raise up a class of Native thinkers whose mental achievements will be among the most substantial results of our educational system.

The several normal schools or training institutions for vernacular schoolmasters form an integral part of this secondary division of our system. They really are our vernacular Colleges. Through them the resources of the ancient languages of India—languages unsurpassed in copiousness, in precision, in flexibility—are adapted to the diffusion of modern knowledge among the Natives. Through them the dead languages of older times are