Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/254

184 within the pale of the Brahman caste, except to a limited extent in favor of Vaidyas, and beyond those limits none of the humanizing influences of learning are seen in the improved moral and intellectual character or physical condition of the surrounding humbler classes of society. It seems never to have entered into the conceptions of the learned that it was their duty to do something for the instruction of those classes who are as ignorant and degraded where learning abounds as where it does not exist; nor has learning any practical influence upon the physical comforts even of its possessors, for their houses are as rude, confined, and inconvenient as those of the more ignorant, and the pathways of Brahman-villages are as narrow, dirty, and irregular as those inhabited by the humblest and most despised Chasas and Chandals.

In the report of 1st July, 1835, mention is made of an English school at Bauleah, the capital of this district, but no information was then possessed respecting it. That school was in operation when I entered the district, but for want of funds was suspended about the beginning of November last. Although the school does not now exist, its revival may be hoped for, and with that anticipation it may be desirable to record the following particulars of its origin and management.

The school was established in July, 1833, and placed under the care of an English teacher receiving eighty rupees per month, with an assistant receiving twenty rupees and a Bengali teacher receiving eight rupees. The English teacher, in addition to his salary, had a bungalow built for him at a cost of eight hundred rupees which he occupied rent-free; and a school-house was built at an expense of one thousand and two hundred rupees. With economical repairs and proper care, both the houses might last fifteen years. The expense of books, pens, paper, ink, and sweeper, to keep the school-house clean, was estimated on an average at twelve rupees per month. The current monthly expenditure thus amounted to one hundred and twenty rupees.