Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/199

Rh which has produced these effects should be carefully analysed and recorded in all its different parts, is no less required by the interests of science in general than by our particular interest as rulers of India. The pundits and students of the Sanskrit College, whose whole time is taken up in teaching and learning that language, are quite unequal to the task. The Asiatic Society, whose proper business it is, are also at present unequal to it; they have no machinery for its performance: the members of the society are principally public officers, overburdened with other duties; and they have as yet been obliged to confine their attention to the replenishment of their museum, and the collection of such scattered notices of the antiquities of the country as have been sent to them by amateur correspondents. The examining and laying open of the different branches of Hindu and Mahommedan literature, has been of necessity, almost entirely neglected; and unless some plan be adopted such as I have suggested, it is not easy to see how this object (the one for which the society was principally founded), can ever be accomplished. Such Arabic and Sanskrit works as are worthy of being preserved, might be printed under the superintendence of the professor and his native assistants; and the expense might be borne,