Page:Macaula yʼs minutes on education in India, written in the years 1835, 1836 and 1837 (IA dli.csl.7615).pdf/12

Rh tinguished among their brethren for talents and acquirements. It may be inferred that the endowments were made for the encouragement of learning only from the fact that the learned teachers are the incumbents.”

Here are six endowments of the same sort. Two are continued, and Mr. Adam acknowledges that they are mere jobs. But if the other four were revived, an immense impulse would be given to learning. I am forced to say that I do not very clearly see how Mr. Adam has arrived at this conclusion.

The important measures which Mr. Shakespear suggests at the close of his minute well deserve serious consideration. I am so much pressed for time at this moment, that I can only give my opinion very concisely. I look forward to a time when we may do all that Mr. Shakespear suggests and even more. But I greatly doubt whether at present, supposing all preliminary difficulties removed and a grant of 78,000 Rupees annum obtained from the Court of Directors in addition to our present funds, we could not employ that sum better than by setting up Thannah Schools. Several plans have occurred to me which perhaps persons acquainted with the country may at once pronounce absurd. It has occurred to me, though it is a little at variance with what I wrote a few pages before, that if we had the means of offering so small an addition as (2) two rupees a month to the present emoluments of a village School-master, in every case in which such a School-master should satisfy an examiner appointed by us of his fitness to teach elementary knowledge well and correctly as far as he went, we might induce three or four thousand village School-masters to take some pains to qualify themselves for their situation. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that Thannah Schools such as Mr. Shakespear proposes would be no more than village Schools, that the School-masters would be no better than the village School-masters. It could not be expected I imagine that boys Would come any distance for such an education as the Thannah Schools would afford. In that case I would rather employ the money, if we could get it, in improving three or four thousand village Schools than in establishing six or seven hundred Thannah Schools.

At present, however, I think we might employ the money better than on either Village or Thannah Schools.

I shall be glad to see what gentlemen who know this country better than I do think on this question.—[Book J. page 127.] 28th September, 1836.

Study of the Mimansa and Sankhya Philosophers at Benares.—The only argument of the smallest force that, can be urged in favour of the encouragement given to the Oriental