Page:Second Report on the State of Education in Bengal (1836).djvu/41

Rh establishment exists at Kusbeh Bagha in which it is professed to be regularly taught; and in one Mahomedan family I found a maulavi employed for the express purpose of teaching the eldest son Arabic. Now Persian, at least in India, is the vestibule through which only access is gained to the temple of Arabic learning; and even those who do not go beyond the porch, by association, attach to the one some portion of the respect which strictly belongs only to the other. It would thus appear that the associations, literary and religious, that connect Persian with Arabic, come in aid of the more general cultivation of the former tongue by Musalmans. But Persian in itself has attractions to educated Musalmans. The language of conversation with them is the Urdu or Hindustani which acknowledges the Persian as its parent, and although the Urdu has a copious literature, that literature is chiefly poetical, and it is only from the Persian that educated Musalmans have hitherto derived that instruction in the knowledge of accounts, of epistolary communication, &c., to which they attach the greatest importance. They teach it to their children, therefore, because it is really the most useful language to which they have access. The recollections belonging to this language still further endear it to Musalmans. It is the language of the former conquerors and rulers of Hindustan from whom they have directly or indirectly sprung, and the memory both of a proud ancestry and of a past dominion—the loyalty which attaches itself rather to religion and to race than to country—attract them to its cultivation. These motives, or motives akin to these, it seems probable induced Dost Mahomed Khan (No. 3), Karim Ali Shah (No. 166), and Musafir-ool-Islam at Kusbeh Bagha, to promote the study of Persian in this district. But even in these cases the importance given to the Persian language in the administration of justice and police and in the collection of the revenue, has had considerable influence; and in other cases, as in Nos. 40 and 100, that consideration has probably exclusive weight. In the two latter the sole or chief patrons of the schools are Hindu landholders or farmers who have no conceivable motive to teach this language to their children, except with a view to the use to which they may hereafter apply it in conducting suits in the Company’s courts, or in holding communications with public officers; unless we take further into