Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/72

58 them able to foretell an eclipse, or compose an almanac; and many of them derive some little pecuniary advantage from pretensions to judicial astrology. In medicine and chemistry they are just sufficiently advanced to talk of substances being moist, dry, hot, &c. in the third or fourth degree; to dissuade from letting blood or physicking on a Tuesday, or under a particular aspect of the heavens, and to be eager in their pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of immortality.

“The task of enlightening the studious youth of such a nation would seem to be a tolerably straightforward one. But though, for the college in Calcutta, (not Bishop’s College, remember, but the Sanskrit, or Hindu College,) an expensive set of instruments has been sent out, and it seems intended that the natural sciences should be studied there, the managers of the present institution take care that their boys should have as little time as possible for such pursuits, by requiring from them all, without exception, a laborious study of Sanskrit, and all the useless, and worse than useless, literature of their ancestors. A good deal of this has been charged (and in some little degree charged with justice) against the exclusive attention paid to Greek and logic, till lately, in Oxford.