Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 7.djvu/87

 MAHRATTA PUNDITS. (359)

HIS group represents a class which has not as yet been illustrated. The members of it are Mahratta Brahmins, who, as long as the Mahrattas governed the provinces of Saugor and Jubbulpoor, acted as local administrators, or held offices as clerks, agents, and ministerial officers, or exercised their profession as Brahmin priests in the performance of domestic ceremonies, giving public or private recitations of the Vedas and Shastras. As the power of the Peshwahs extended on all sides, a large field was open for the employment of intelligent Brahmin youths, and they were, as a rule, not only well educated in their own language, but in Sanscrit at the public college in Poona, and in the schools which sprung up everywhere. While the superior officers and chieftains were illiterate, most of them being unable even to sign their names, the Brahmins became clerks, secretaries, managers, and the like, and exclusive of religious profession had a monopoly of all learning necessary for public life. They were excellent accountants and secretaries, and most faithful to their employers. Some of them even became soldiers on emergent occasions, and brave and judicious commanders of large armies. The R18tory of the Mahrattas by the late Colonel Grant Duff, Malcolm's Central India, and many other standard works, give repeated illustrations of the real value of the Mahratta Brahmins, their high intellectual capacity, perseverance, true faith, and even devotion, in various capacities; and to the present day they are employed under the British Government in all departments with distinguished usefulness and merit. Apt at public business, they serve as native judges, commissioners, collectors, surveyors, architects, and civil engineers; they are also physicians, lawyers, advocates, and pleaders of great mental clearness and capacity, and they are professors in native colleges and schoolmasters all over the country. The study of English is popular among them, and some attain great perfection both in speaking and writing it. At foreign courts they master Persian, and in short, by their intellectual powers, are sure of success wherever they are employed. Every