Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/198

128 lowed in the present inquiry came under consideration, it was proposed and sanctioned that the general course prescribed to Dr. Buchanan should be adopted—not retracing any of the ground already trodden by him, but beginning from the point in Bengal at which his labors appear to have been brought to a close. If his investigations had been prolonged, the district of Rajshahi, in pursuance of his instructions, would probably have received his earliest attention, and it has consequently formed the first subject of the present inquiry.

The appended tables relate only to one thana or police sub-division of that district. I at first contemplated the practicability of traversing the entire surface of every district and of reporting on the state of education in every separate thana which it contained, but when I actually entered on the work, I found that an adherence to the instructions I have received would render this impossible, or possible only with such a consumption of time and such a neglect of purposes of practical and immediate utility, as would tend to frustrate the object in view. My instructions state that “the General Committee deem it more important that the information obtained should be complete as far as it goes, clear and specific in its details, and depending upon actual observation or undoubted authority, than that you should hurry over a large space in a short time, and be able to give only a crude and imperfect account of the state of education within that space. With a view to ulterior measures, it is just as necessary to know the extent of the ignorance that prevails where education is wholly or almost wholly neglected, as to know the extent of the acquirements made where some attention is paid to it.” The soundness of these views will not be disputed, but to extend over every sub-division of every district throughout the country, the minute enquiry which they prescribe is not the work of one man or of one life, but of several devoting their whole lives to the duty. Without attempting, therefore, what it would be impossible to accomplish, I have sought to fulfil the instructions of the Committee by thoroughly examining the state of education in one of the sub-divisions of the district which, with such qualifications as will appear to be necessary, may be taken as a sample of the whole; while, at the same time, the state of education generally in the other sub-divisions, and of particular institutions worthy of note, has not been neglected.