Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/500

 devoted to science and to literature, without the making either of books or discoveries. There are few more dignified occupations than indulging to the uttermost what has been well called "la grande curiosite" : and no one can do that, however recluse may be his turn, without making himself a fountain-head of wisdom in his own immediate neighbourhood. This University will not have done anything like its fair share of work till South India too has many Actons. A native gentleman of position, at Vizagapatam, devotes himself to astronomy, and, much to his credit, supports an Observatory. The Maharajah of Vizianagram, forward in all good works, is, as one who bears his title well may be, an assiduous student of Sanskrit, but the great names of the land have not yet begun to take the place they should do, either in the accumulation, or in the encouragement, of learning. How many of you are seeking to obtain a large and scholarly knowledge of the vernaculars of South India? A distinguished European savant, intimately acquainted with Northern India, wrote to me lately : "I am going to the Orientalist Congress at Venice in September. Could you find me a Dravidian pundit, a man thoroughly individual and quite unlike an Aryan pundit?" I have made what enquiry I could, and I think I could as easily send to Venice a live Megatherium or a live Pterodactyl. Surely this should not be so. In the West, we have hundreds and hundreds of men, who are producing literature of a high order; and hundreds and hundreds more, who are great scholars, pundits of profound learning, German, French, English and what not, who do not produce much, but whose powers of acquisition are marvellous. I want to know whether there are many such, or any such, amongst you, and if not, whether you do not think it highly desirable that the class should be called into existence? This duty of doing something for your literature is doubly incumbent upon such of you, as are of pure Dravidian race—a race not nearly so numerously represented amongst our graduates as it should be, but comprising some twenty-nine millions of the inhabitants of this Presidency. It seems probable that you Dravidians had already made very considerable advances in the arts of life and in government at a remote period, by your own strength. Then came the Aryans of the East. They gave you a great impulse. After a vast interval of time, these were followed by the Aryans of the West. These last are beginning to give, both to you and to the Aryans of the East, an infinitely greater impulse, but the last thing which any sensible man amongst them desires