Page:The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy Vol 2.djvu/338

326 sors, who have already undertaken on their own account to teach them, and would by such rewards be stimulated to still greater exertions.

From these considerations, as the sunsum [sic] set apart for the instruction of the natives of India was intended by the Government in England for the improvement of its Indian subjects, I beg leave to state, with due deference to your Lordship’s exalted situation, that if the plan now adopted be followed, it will completely defeat the object proposed; since no improvement can be expected from inducing young men to consume a dozen of years of the most valuable period of their lives in acquiring the niceties of Baikaran or Sanskrit grammar. For instance, in learning to discuss such points as the following: khada, signifying to eat, khadati, he or she or it eats; query, whether does khadati, taken as a whole, convey the meaning he, she, or it eats, or are separate parts of this meaning conveyed by distinctions of the words, as if in the English language it were asked, how much meaning is there in the eat, how much in the s and is the whole meaning of the word conveyed by these two portions of it distinctly, or by them taken jointly?

Neither can much improvement arise from such speculations as the following, which are the themes suggested by the Vedanta,—in what manner is the soul absorbed into the Deity? What relation does it bear to the Divine Essence? Nor will youths be fitted to be better members of society by the Vedantic doctrines, which teach them to believe that all visible things have no real existence; that as father, brother, &c. have no actual entity, they consequently deserve no real affection, and therefore the sooner we escape from them and leave the world the better.