Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/230

Rh in this Department, but 5 years are necessary to enable a student to pass through the 5 Grades. For want of a better system, the advantage gained is very little, compared with the length of time spent by students in this Department.

"Mugdhabodha is a very short compendium of Grammar. The Author Vopadeva seems to have had brevity simply in view. Having had this for his object, he has consequently made his work extremely difficult. The Sanscrit is in itself a very difficult language, and to begin its study with a difficult Grammar seems, in my opinion, not to be a well chosen plan. Experience shows what difficulties one has to surmount, when studying his Grammar in this style. Young lads when begin to study Sanscrit, on account of the extreme difficulty of the Grammar Mugdhabodha, only learn by rote what their instructors say, without being able themselves to understand the contents of the work they read. Thus 5 years pass in the study of Grammar alone without getting any essential introduction to the language itself. It seems to be an astounding fact that one should be studying a language for 5 years, and scarcely understand a bit of it. Moreover, the Mugdhabodha, with all its voluminous commentaries, which last however are not read in the College, is an inperfect Grammar. So under the present system, the first 5 years of a student of the Sanscrit College is almost lost to useless purposes. After all his toil and trouble, his acquirements in Grammar are very imperfect. Again, Dhatupatha, another of the works studied in this Department, is a collection of Sanscrit roots in verse. Amarakosha, the 3rd. work of study, is a Dictionary also in verse. These two works, when mastered, I admit, are of some assistance, to the study of Literary works. But the advantage gained is not at all commensurate to the time and labour required to get them by heart. Besides, almost all the standard Sanscrit poetical works, which is the