Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/11



Reports on the State of Education in Bengal submitted to Government in the thirties of the last century are a veritable storehouse of information about the intellectual and cultural conditions of the people of this province in those days. In fact, the value of those documents cannot be over-estimated. They provide us with an accurate picture of the educational condition of the people of Bengal in the early years of the nineteenth century and, incidentally, they throw much light on other aspects of life too. Their importance to students of cultural history of Bengal and specially of education is indeed great. This importance is all the more enhanced when we consider the paucity of materials for reconstructing the cultural history of the province in the early years of British rule in this country. The literature of the day does not offer us much help, nor are the contemporary records plenty. Then again, some of these records lack the sympathetic understanding of, and close familiarity with, the life of the people—characteristics which Adam brings to bear upon his investigations. Adam possessed also a rare insight which helped him to assess with a fair amount of accuracy the actual state of things and to understand the real intellectual needs of the people. Indeed, as remarked while appointing him, Adam was eminently suited for the task entrusted to him and these Reports show how successfully he performed it. Moreover, Adam supports his researches and findings with a mass of valuable statistics which add to the importance of his reports; and they are justly held in high esteem by those who are familiar with them.

Unfortunately, Adam’s Reports have been long out of print. In fact copies of the first edition are extremely rare. Even in 1861 the original reports were not easily accessible and so the Bengal Government accepted the offer of the Rev. (of the indigo fame) “to edit a selection from or digest of the most useful portions of them.” But ill-health prevented Long from giving immediate effect to his ideas and it was not till 1868 that