Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/231

Rh prising as it does an inestimable body of scientific information; and in progress of time, of their translating them into the vernacular tongues of India, for the benefit of their countrymen. We wish them to be able to drink at the fountainhead, instead of depending to allay their mental thirst with driblets of translations, occasionally from the hands of an European.

But the exclusive study of English, Mr. Tytler deems, will be chargeable with producing an effect which he greatly deprecates. It must necessarily, he thinks, discourage the natives from the cultivation of their own tongues. Were Arabic and Persian their own tongues, there would be some show of reason in the objection; but when we bear in mind that they are as foreign to the people as English, its validity vanishes at once. To the great body of the people, too, the Sanscrit is in effect quite a foreign language. Of the absorption of that language we need have no fear, so long as it is the interest of the Brahmins to foster it. But if the thing were possible, we are by no means disposed to view the substitution of English for these tongues as a misfortune. As to the objection, that the study of English would put an end to all native composition and indigenous literature; we would simply inquire, if there is in the world a less edifying and more barren literature than that of Hindoostan, or one that has done less for morality, philosophy, and science?

With reference to that imitation of English writers, which Mr. Tytler assumes would beset native students, that gentleman quotes with complacency a saying of Johnson, “That no man was ever great by imitation,” and amplifies the apophthegm so as to comprehend masses of men; as if the saying stood, that no people ever became great by imitation. The saying thus applied, becomes an untenable sophism; for, on reflection, we shall find that the converse of the position holds true; since civilisation itself is nothing else but a complex system of imitation.