Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/148

134 natives with false systems, and to keep our good instruction till it is too late to be of use, but to get the start of their prejudices by educating them, from the beginning, according to our own views. We ought to cherish European learning, which has already taken deep root and begun to throw out vigorous shoots, leaving the trunk of the old system to a natural and undisturbed decay. The rising generation will become the whole nation in the course of a few years. They are all craving for instruction, and we may mould their unoccupied and supple minds in any way we please.

The ancient system of learning is so constituted that while we have no assistance to expect, we have, at the same time, no opposition to fear, from its native professors. According to the theory of Hinduism, Law, Philosophy and Divinity, are the peculiar inheritance of the Brahmins, while the study of other branches of literature and science is open to the inferior castes. “But practically,” Mr. Adam observes, “Brahmins monopolise not only a part, but the whole, of Sanskrit learning. In the two Behar districts, both teachers and students, without a single exception belong to that caste, and the exceptions in the Bengal districts are comparatively few.”