Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/154

140 our system has hitherto been to encourage not English but Mahommedan learning.

Persian has now ceased to be the official language; and, as it is not recommended by any other consideration, the study of it must soon die out. The inducement to learn Arabic will be greatly diminished, if it will not be altogether annihilated by the promulgation of a code. Sanskrit will, for the same reason, be cultivated by a smaller number of persons than formerly; and the study of it will be confined to those Brahmins who wish to qualify themselves to be priests and astrologers. Meanwhile the tide has set in strongly in favour of English; and the popular inclination is seconded by a system of public instruction, which is daily becoming more extended and better organised: an advantage which the old learning never had. The Brahminical monopoly of knowledge is now reacting on those for whose benefit it was established; and the national curiosity, which had for so many ages been deprived of its natural gratification, is greedily availing itself of the new opening presented to it. If this disposition of the people be only moderately gratified by the establishment so proper means of instruction, we may reasonably expect that ten years hence the number of person studying English will be in the proportion of ten