Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/94

80 Indeed, books in the learned native languages are such a complete drug in the market, that the school book society has for some time past ceased to print them; and that society, as well as the education committee, has a considerable part of its capital locked up in Sanskrit and Arabic lore, which was accumulated during the period when the oriental mania carried every thing before it. Twenty-three thousand such volumes, most of them folios and quartos, filled the library, or rather the lumber room, of the education committee at the time when the printing was put a stop to, and during the preceding three years their sale had not yielded quite one thousand rupees.

At all the oriental colleges, besides being instructed gratuitously, the students had monthly stipends allowed them, which were periodically augmented till they quitted the institution. At the English seminaries, not only was this expedient for obtaining pupils quite superfluous, but the native youth were ready themselves to pay for the privilege of being admitted. The average monthly collection on this account from the pupils of the Hindu college for February and March 1836 was, sicca rupees, 1,325. Can there be more conclusive evidence of the real state of the demand than this? The Hindu college is held under the