Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/78

 after, since its establishment, was to diffuse Sanskrit education. English was not then compulsory. It was optional. Very few boys took up English as a second language, and it was taught only meagrely. From this, it seems that the authorities had Sanskrit most at heart and that their object was to impart Sanskrit education to the exclusion of English. Whatever their object might be, practically English was excluded from the curriculum of the College.

The mode of imparting instruction, too, adopted in this seminary, at that time, was wholly indigenous. There were no benches for the pupils, no chairs for the teachers. Only Brahman and other Dvija (twice-born) boys were allowed to enter the College. The pupils had to sit on mats spread upon the floor, and their teachers sat opposite to them, reclining on heavy pillows, as is the practice in tols.

The Sanskrit College of Calcutta was established in the year 1824. At the time of its foundation, Raja Ram Mohan Ray, the founder of the modern Brahma faith, and the first Hindu native of Bengal, who dared leave the shores of India and cross the ocean, and who has immortalised himself in the pages of history as the first Hindu native of India, who raised his hand against the practice, then obtaining in this country, of burning living Satis in the funeral pyres of their dead husbands, and some other influential men of the time, who had got English education and imbibed