Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/39

 Guzerat, which combines in so remarkable a degree so much that remains of the civilization of ancient India and so much of the promise of the future.

The report which we have just heard read again speaks of steady, assured progress as compared with former years. There are two features in it which seem to me especially noteworthy. First, there is the greatly increased area from which matriculated students have been drawn. Not only is the number of such students greater than in former years, but in the enumeration of more than thirty institutions from which students have been drawn, I observe the names of many schools from which no student has ever before been matriculated. This speaks well for the extended influence of the University, and for the hold it is establishing over our schools as the standard of education in this part of India. The other fact which I would notice is that we find among the graduates this day, and holding a very honourable place among them, the first Sindee scholar who has been educated at this University. I notice this not merely on account of the great personal interest I shall ever feel in a province where so many years of my life were spent, but because it illustrates, in a very remarkable degree, the influence which an institution like this University cannot but exercise over all education down to the most elementary. Probably there is no province in India where there was, previous to the British rule, such an entire absence of education of any kind as in Sind. There were indeed a few traces of the learning of former days. Philologists investigated the language, and discovered that it had once held a high place among the most cultivated and copious dialects of India, and there were yet traces of what in former days had been famous Seminaries of Persian and Arabic learning, but all was of the past. There were no public schools to teach even the very elements of learning. Schools, scholars, teachers, professors, had alike to be created. It might be said, and it was said by many most influential educationists, "This is a case where nothing can be done but to provide elementary schools—schools for primary or popular education, on which in future generations, may be grafted schools of a higher character, as colleges." These primary branches of education were not neglected, but it was decided, and I think most wisely decided, not to rest content with these first steps in education, but to endeavour to train a few of the most promising scholars to join at once the higher institutions for national education which have their seat in this island. We have now the results of this experiment.