Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/223

Rh of the English language; and lastly, whether the modicum of unscientific medical literature contained in the Sanscrit is worth undergoing the enormous trouble of acquiring that language.

Unlike the languages of Europe, which are keys to vast intellectual treasures, bountifully to reward the literary inquirer, those of the East, save to a limited extent in poetry and romance, may be said, without exaggeration, to be next to barren. For history and science, then, and all that essentially refines and adorns, we must not look to Oriental writers.

Mr. Tytler has favoured us with his opinions, on the question under consideration, at great length. The Rev. Mr., whose experience in instructing native youth is extensive and valuable, has also obliged us with his sentiments on the subject; which are entirely at issue with those of Mr. Tytler, who takes up the Oriental side of the question with equal ardour and ingenuity.

Mr. Tytler denies that a system of educating the natives through the medium of English would be in the least more comprehensive, or by any means so much so, as one carried on in the native languages (Mr. Tytler, in that phrase including Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian); and considers it wholly inexpedient as a general measure.

The Rev. Mr. Duff, on the other hand, although acknowledging that the native languages, by which we understand the Bengallee in the lower provinces, and the Oordoo in the higher, alone are available for imparting an elementary education to the mass of the people, affirms that the popular language does not afford an adequate medium for communicating a knowledge of the higher departments of literature, and science, &c. “No original works of the description wanted,” he observes, “have yet appeared in the native languages; and though much of a highly useful nature has been provided through European talent and perseverance