Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/113

Rh supposed necessity for reviving oriental literature. On the contrary, they stated the objects for which the committee had been appointed to be “the better instruction of the people, the introduction of useful knowledge, including the arts and sciences of Europe, and the improvement of their moral character,” objects with which the learning of the shasters and the Koran, which it was afterwards proposed to revive, are at complete variance. The court of directors in their dispatch written about the same period are still more explicit. They emphatically state that “it is worse than a waste of time to employ persons either to teach or to learn the sciences in the state in which they are found in oriental books;” that “the great end should not have been to teach Hindu learning or Mohammedan learning, but useful learning;” and that, in establishing seminaries for the purpose of teaching mere Hindu or mere Mohammedan literature, the Indian government bound themselves “to teach a great deal of what was frivolous, not a little of what was purely mischievous, and a small remainder indeed in which utility was in any way concerned.” But meanwhile the administration of the fund had fallen into the hands of persons devoted to oriental studies, party zeal was excited,