Page:Hints Relative To Native Schools (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.102605).pdf/98

Rh It is true, that when these helps are provided, namely, a correct system of Orthography—a sketch of Grammar, a simplified system of Arithmetic,—and an extended Vocabulary, little is done beyond laying the foundation. Still however this foundation must be laid, if any superstructure of knowledge and virtue be attempted relative to the inhabitants of India. Yet, were the plan to stop here, something would have been done, a peasant, or an artificer, thus rendered capable of writing as well as reading his own language with propriety, and made acquainted with the principles of arithmetic, would be less liable to become a prey to fraud among his own countrymen, and far better able to claim for himself that protection from oppression, which it is the desire of every enlightened government to grant. But the chief advantage derivable from this plan is, its facilitating the reception of ideas which may enlarge and bless the mind in a high degree; ideas for which India must be indebted to the west, at present the seat of science, and for the communication of which, generations yet unborn will pour benedictions on the British name.

1. To this then might be added a concise but perspicuous account of the Solar System, preceded by so much of the laws of motion, of attraction and gravity, as might be necessary to render the solar system plain and intelligible. These ideas however, should not be communicated in the form of a treatise, but in that of simple axioms delivered in short and perspicuous sentences. This method comes recommended by several considerations: it agrees with the mode in which doctrines are communicated in the Hindoo Shastras, and is therefore congenial with the ideas of even the learned among them; it would admit of these sentences being written from dictation, and even committed to memory with advantage, as well as of their being easily retained; and finally the conciseness of this method would allow of a multitude of truths and facts relative to