Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/71

 others by the legs, and carry him to the Guru, who gives him a severe flogging.

Mr was appointed by  to report on the system of education then in vogue in this country. He, having inspected the patshalas spoke in his report of fourteen methods of inflicting punishment in these. Some of them were very horrible indeed; and we here mention two. One was to make the offender powerless by tying his hands and legs, and then to apply nettles all over his body. How the young sufferer smarted under this severe affliction! But there was another still more terrible punishment, diabolical ingenious; it was to put the victim in a sack together with a cat, and to roll it about. The cat tore the boy’s body with its teeth and claws; and when the boy was brought out, it took some time to revive him.

The very presence of the Guru was a great terror to the boys, and it was not at all strange that they would often run away from the patshala, and hide themselves in unfrequented parts of the neighbourhood, for fear of being captured, and taken to the merciless pedagogue. Dewan Kartik Chandra Rai refers to a case like this. “Some of our neighbours’ boys, of the same age as I, used to attend the patshala in Babu Debi Chaudhuri’s house. A cousin of mine belonged to it was frequently punished for being inattentive to his studies. Sometimes, to avoid being dealt with in this way, he would take refuge in our house, hoping that while there he was outside the jurisdiction of the Guru; but often the myrmidons of this relentless man would lie in ambush, and would capture my cousin by surprise. One day, finding no other place sufficiently safe, he entered a hut, got on the scaffold on it, and passed there full twenty four hours without food or drink. On another occasion