ON 
 
 THE EDUCATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PEOPLE OF INDIA. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 Printed by A. SPOTTISWOODF, 
 yew-Street-Square. 
 
ON 
 
 THE EDUCATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 
 
 CHARLES E. TREVELYAN, ESQ. 
 
 n 
 
 OF THE BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS, 
 
 PATER NOSTER -ROW. 
 
 1838. 
 
LAn 
 
 *<^ f 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Measures first adopted for educating the Natives. 
 The Establishment of the Committee of Public In- 
 struction. Their first Plan of Operations. The 
 Difference of Opinion which arose. The Resolution 
 of Government of the 7th March 1835. The Mea- 
 sures adopted by the Committee in consequence. No 
 Distinction of Caste allowed in the new Seminaries. 
 Cultivation of the Vernacular Languages. Education 
 of the Wards of Government. The Medical College. 
 Mr. Adam's Deputation. - Page 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Study of Foreign Languages and Literature a 
 powerful Instrument of National Improvement. The 
 Instruction of the Upper and Middle Classes the first 
 Object. - - - * - 36 
 
 ZT 4 O O * P-" 
 
 Dloolu 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The violent Opposition made by Oriental Scholars to the 
 Resolution of the 7th March 1835. The whole Ques- 
 tion rests upon Two Points ; first, Whether English or 
 Arabic and Sanskrit Literature is best calculated for the 
 Improvement of the People of India ? and, secondly, 
 Whether, supposing English Literature to be best 
 adapted for that Purpose, the Natives are willing to 
 cultivate it ? These Points considered. - Page 50 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Objections answered. Construction of the Charter Act 
 of 1813. Change in the Employment of the public 
 Endowments for the Encouragement of Learning. 
 Abolition of Stipends. Probability of the Natives 
 being able to prosecute the Study of English with 
 effect. The alleged Necessity of cultivating Arabic 
 and Sanskrit for the sake of improving the Vernacular 
 Languages. The Plan of employing Maulavees and 
 Pundits as our Agents for the Propagation of Eu- 
 ropean Science. Whether or not it is our Duty to 
 patronise the same Kind of Leaming as our Prede- 
 cessors. - 95 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Proofs that the Time has arrived for taking up the Ques- 
 tion of National Education. The Disuse of the Per- 
 sian Language, The many important bearings of this 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 Change. The Codification of the Mahommedan and 
 Hindu Law. The increased Employment of the 
 Natives. The Concurrence of all Classes of the Com- 
 munity towards the Object. - Page 143 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Establishment of a Seminary at each Zillah Station, a 
 necessary Preliminary to further Operations. The 
 Preparation of Books in the Vernacular Languages. 
 A Law of Copyright required. Native Education in 
 the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. The Establish- 
 ment of a comprehensive System of public Instruction 
 for the whole of British India urgently required. 
 The public Importance of a separate Provision being 
 made for the Prosecution of Researches into ancient 
 Asiatic Literature. - - 170 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Political Tendency of the different Systems of 
 Education in Use in India. - - 187 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Extract from the Report of the Committee appointed by 
 the Indian Government to inquire into the State of 
 Medical Education. - - Page 207 
 
ON 
 
 THE EDUCATION 
 
 THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Measures first adopted for educating the Natives. 
 The Establishment of the Committee of Public In- 
 struction Their first Plan of Operations. The 
 
 Difference of Opinion which arose. The Resolution 
 of Government of the 7th March 1835. The Mea- 
 sures adopted by the Committee in consequence. 
 No Distinction of Caste allowed in the new Semi' 
 naries. Cultivation of the vernacular Languages. 
 Education of the Wards of Government. The 
 Medical College. Mr. Adam's Deputation. 
 
 J. HE history of the first efforts made by us for the 
 education of our Indian fellow-subjects may be 
 told in a few words. The Mohammedan college 
 at Calcutta was established A.D. 1781, and the 
 Sanskrit college at Benares A. D. 1792. The 
 
 B 
 
2 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 course of study at these institutions was purely 
 oriental, and the object of it was to provide a 
 regular supply of qualified Hindu and Moham- 
 medan law officers for the judicial administration. 
 The next step taken was at the renewal of the 
 Company's charter in 1813, when 10,000/., or a lac 
 of rupees a year, was set apart " for the revival and 
 promotion of literature, and the encouragement of 
 the learned natives of India, and for the intro- 
 duction and promotion of a knowledge of the 
 sciences among the inhabitants of the British ter- 
 ritories." The subject was however regarded at 
 that time in India with so much apathy, that no 
 measures were adopted to fulfil the intentions of 
 the British legislature till 1823. On the 17th of 
 July in that year the governor general in council 
 resolved, that " there should be constituted a gene- 
 ral committee of public instruction for the purpose 
 of ascertaining the state of public education, and of 
 the public institutions designed for its promotion, 
 and of considering, and from time to time sub- 
 mitting to government, the suggestion of such 
 measures as it may appear expedient to adopt with 
 a view to the better instruction of the people, to 
 the introduction among them of useful knowledge, 
 and to the improvement of their moral character." 
 Corresponding instructions were addressed to the 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 3 
 
 gentlemen who were to compose the committee*, 
 and the arrears of the annual lac of rupees were 
 accounted for to them from the 1st May 1821. 
 From this period the general committee of public 
 instruction must be regarded as the sole organ of 
 the government in every thing that concerns that 
 important branch of its functions. 
 
 The first measures of the new committee were 
 to complete the organization of a Sanskrit col- 
 lege, then lately established by the government at 
 Calcutta, in lieu of two similar institutions, the 
 formation of which had been previously contem- 
 plated at Nuddea and Tirhoot ; to take under their 
 patronage and greatly to improve the Hindu 
 college at Calcutta, which had been founded as 
 far back as 1816, by the voluntary contributions 
 of the natives themselves, for the instruction of 
 their youth in English literature and science ; to 
 found two entirely new colleges at Delhi and Agra 
 for the cultivation of oriental literature ; to com- 
 mence the printing of Sanskrit and Arabic books 
 
 * In the instructions addressed to the committee, the object of 
 their appointment was stated to be the " considering and from time 
 to time submitting to government the suggestion of such measures 
 as it may appear expedient to adopt with a view to the better 
 instruction of the people, to the introduction of useful knowledge, 
 including the sciences and arts of Europe, and to the improvement 
 of their moral character." 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 on a great scale, besides liberally encouraging 
 such undertakings by others ; and to employ an 
 accomplished oriental scholar in translating Eu- 
 ropean scientific works into Arabic, upon which 
 undertaking large sums were subsequently ex- 
 pended. English classes were afterwards estab- 
 lished in connection with the Mohammedan and 
 Sanskrit college at Calcutta, the Sanskrit college 
 at Benares, and the Agra college ; and a separate 
 institution was founded at Delhi in 1829 for the 
 cultivation of western learning, in compliance with 
 the urgent solicitation of the authorities at that 
 place. 
 
 The principles which guided the proceedings of 
 the committee throughout this period are explained 
 in the following extract from their printed report, 
 dated in December 1831 : 
 
 " The introduction of useful knowledge is the 
 great object which they have proposed as the end 
 of the measures adopted or recommended by them, 
 keeping in view the necessity of consulting the 
 feelings and conciliating the confidence of those 
 for whose advantage their measures are designed. 
 
 " The committee has therefore continued to en- 
 courage the acquirement of the native literature 
 oi both Mohammedans and Hindus, in the insti- 
 tutions which they found established for these 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 5 
 
 purposes, as the Madressa of Calcutta and Sanskrit 
 college of Benares. They have also endeavoured 
 to promote the activity of similar establishments, 
 of which local considerations dictated the forma- 
 tion, as the Sanskrit college of Calcutta and the 
 colleges of Agra and Delhi, as it is to such alone, 
 even in the present day, that the influential and 
 learned classes, those who are by birthright or 
 profession teachers and expounders of literature, 
 law, and religion, maulavis and pundits, willingly 
 resort. 
 
 " In the absence of their natural patrons, the 
 rich and powerful of their own creeds, the com- 
 mittee have felt it incumbent upon them to con- 
 tribute to the support of the learned classes of 
 India by literary endowments, which provide not 
 only directly for a certain number, but indirectly 
 for many more, who derive from collegiate ac- 
 quirements consideration and subsistence amongst 
 their countrymen. As far also as Mohammedan 
 and Hindu law are concerned, an avenue is thus 
 opened for them to public employment, and the 
 state is provided with a supply of able servants 
 and valuable subjects ; for there is no doubt that, 
 imperfect as oriental learning may be in many 
 respects, yet the higher the degree of the attain- 
 ments even in it possessed by any native, the more 
 3 3 
 
6 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 intelligent and liberal he will prove, and the better 
 qualified to appreciate the acts and designs of the 
 government. 
 
 " But whilst every reasonable encouragement 
 is given to indigenous native education, no oppor- 
 tunity has been omitted by the committee of im- 
 proving its quality and adding to its value. In 
 all the colleges the superintendence is European, 
 and this circumstance is of itself an evidence and 
 a cause of very important amelioration. In the 
 Madressa of Calcutta and Hindu college of 
 Benares, institutions of earlier days, European 
 superintendence was for many years strenuously 
 and successfully resisted. This opposition has 
 long ceased. The consequences are a systematic 
 course of study, diligent and regular habits, and 
 an impartial appreciation of merits, which no insti- 
 tution left to native superintendence alone has 
 ever been known to maintain. 
 
 " The plan of study adopted in the colleges is 
 in general an improvement upon the native mode, 
 and is intended to convey a well-founded know- 
 ledge of the languages studied, with a wider range 
 of acquirement than is common, and to effect this 
 in the least possible time. Agreeably to the native 
 mode of instruction, for instance, a Hindu or Mo- 
 hammedan lawyer devotes the best years of his 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 7 
 
 life to the acquirement of law alone, and is very 
 imperfectly acquainted with the language which 
 treats of the subject of his studies. In the Ma- 
 dressa and Sanskrit college the first part of the 
 course is now calculated to form a really good 
 Arabic and Sanskrit scholar, and a competent know- 
 ledge of law is then acquired with comparative 
 facility and contemporaneously with other branches 
 of Hindu or Mohammedan learning. 
 
 " Again, the improvements effected have not 
 been limited to a reformation in the course and 
 scope of native study, but, whenever opportunity 
 has favoured, new and better instruction has been 
 grafted upon the original plan. Thus in the 
 Madressa, Euclid has been long studied and with 
 considerable advantage : European anatomy has 
 also been introduced. In the Sanskrit college of 
 Calcutta, European anatomy and medicine have 
 nearly supplanted the native systems. At Agra 
 and at Delhi the elements of geography and 
 astronomy and mathematics are also part of the 
 college course. To the Madressa, the Sanskrit 
 college of Calcutta, and the Agra college, also, 
 English classes are attached, whilst at Delhi and 
 Benares distinct schools have been formed for the 
 dissemination of the English language. Without 
 offering therefore any violence to native prejudices, 
 B 4 
 
8 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 and whilst giving liberal encouragement to purely 
 native education, the principle of connecting it 
 with the introduction of real knowledge has never 
 been lost sight of, and the foundation has been 
 laid of great and beneficial change in the minds 
 of those who by their character and profession 
 direct and influence the intellect of Hindustan. 
 
 " In addition to the measures adopted for the 
 diffusion of English in the provinces, and which 
 are yet only in their infancy, the encouragement 
 of the Vidyalaya, or Hindu college of Calcutta, 
 has always been one of the chief objects of the 
 committee's attention. The consequence has sur- 
 passed expectation. A command of the English 
 language and a familiarity with its literature and 
 science have been acquired to an extent rarely 
 equalled by any schools in Europe. A taste for 
 English has been widely disseminated, and inde- 
 pendent schools, conducted by young men reared 
 in the Vidyalaya, are springing up in every direc- 
 tion. The moral effect has been equally remark- 
 able, and an impatience of the restrictions of 
 Hmduism and a disregard of its ceremonies arc- 
 openly avowed by many young men of respectable 
 birth and talents, and entertained by many more 
 who outwardly conform to the practices of their 
 countrymen. Another generation will probably 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 9 
 
 witness a very material alteration in the notions 
 and feelings of the educated classes of the Hindu 
 community of Calcutta." 
 
 Meanwhile the progress of events was leading 
 to the necessity of adopting a more decided course. 
 The taste for English became more and more 
 <* widely disseminated." A loud call arose for the 
 means of instruction in it, and the subject was 
 pressed on the committee from various quarters. 
 English books only were in any demand : up- 
 wards of thirty-one thousand English books were 
 sold by the school-book society in the course 
 of two years, while the education committee 
 did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit volumes 
 enough in three years to pay the expense of 
 keeping them for two months*, to say nothing 
 of the printing expenses. Among other signs of 
 the times, a petition was presented to the com- 
 mittee by a number of young men who had been 
 brought up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically 
 representing that, notwithstanding the long and 
 
 * The committee's book depository cost 638 rupees a month, or 
 about 1651. 12s. a year, of which 300/. a year was the salary of the 
 European superintendent. The sum realized by the sale of the 
 books during the three last years of the establishment was less than 
 100/. On the change of the committee's operations the whole of 
 this expense was saved, some of the books being transferred to the 
 Asiatic Society, and the rest placed under the charge of the secre- 
 tary to the committee. 
 
 B 5 
 
10 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 elaborate course of study which they had gone 
 through, they had little prospect of bettering their 
 condition ; that the indifference with which they 
 were generally regarded by their countrymen left 
 them no hope of assistance from them, and that they 
 therefore trusted that the government, which had 
 made them what they were, would not abandon 
 them to destitution and neglect. The English, 
 classes which had been tacked on to this and other 
 oriental colleges had entirely failed in their object. 
 The boys had not time to go through an English, 
 in addition to an oriental course, and the study 
 which was secondary was naturally neglected. 
 The translations into Arabic, also, appeared to 
 have made as little impression upon the few who 
 knew that language, as upon the mass of the people 
 who were entirely unacquainted with it. 
 
 Under these circumstances a difference of opi- 
 nion arose in the committee. One section of it 
 was for following out the existing system, for 
 continuing the Arabic translations*, the profuse 
 
 * After all that had been expended on this object, there still 
 remained 6,500Z. assigned for the completion of Arabic translations 
 of only six books ; viz. 3,2001. for five medical works, and 3,300/. 
 for the untranslated part of Button's mathematics, " with some- 
 thing extra for diagrams." These ruinous expenses absorbed all 
 our disposable funds, and starved the only useful branch of our 
 operations, which was also the only one for which there was any 
 real demand. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 11 
 
 patronage of Arabic and Sanskrit works, and the 
 printing operations; by all which means fresh 
 masses would have been added to an already un- 
 saleable and useless hoard. An edition of Avicenna 
 was also projected, at an expense of 2,000/. ; and 
 as it was found that, after hiring students to attend 
 the Arabic college, and having translations made 
 for their use at an expense of thirty-two shillings a 
 page, neither students nor teachers could under- 
 stand them, it was proposed to employ the trans- 
 lator as the interpreter of his own writings, at a 
 further expense of 300 rupees a month. The 
 other section of the committee wished to dispense 
 with this cumbrous and expensive machinery for 
 teaching English science through the medium of 
 the Arabic language; to give no bounties, in the 
 shape of stipends to students, for the encourage- 
 ment of any particular kind of learning ; to pur- 
 chase or print only such Arabic and Sanskrit 
 books as might actually be required for the use of 
 the different colleges ; and to employ that portion 
 of their annual income which would by these 
 means be set free, in the establishment of new 
 seminaries for giving instruction in English and 
 the vernacular languages, at the places where such 
 institutions were most in demand. 
 
 This fundamental difference of opinion long 
 B 6 
 
12 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 obstructed the business of the committee. Almost 
 every thing which came before them was more or 
 less involved in it. The two parties were so 
 equally balanced as to be unable to make a for- 
 ward movement in any direction. A particular 
 point might occasionally be decided by an acci- 
 dental majority of one or two, but as the decision 
 was likely to be reversed the next time the sub- 
 ject came under consideration, this only added in- 
 consistency to inefficiency. This state of things 
 lasted for about three years, until both parties 
 became convinced that the usefulness and respec- 
 tability of their body would be utterly compro- 
 mised by its longer continuance. The committee 
 had come to a dead stop, and the government 
 alone could set it in motion again, by giving a 
 preponderance to one or the other of the two 
 opposite sections. The members, therefore, took 
 the only course which remained open to them, and 
 laid before the government a statement of their 
 existing position, and of the grounds of the con- 
 flicting opinions held by them. 
 
 The question was now fairly brought to issue, 
 and the government was forced to make its elec- 
 tion between two opposite principles. So much, 
 perhaps, never depended upon the determination 
 of any government. Happily there was then at 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, 13 
 
 the head of affairs one of the few who pursue the 
 welfare of the public independently of every per- 
 sonal consideration : happily also he was sup- 
 ported by one who, after having embellished the 
 literature of Europe, came to its aid when it was 
 trembling in the scale with the literature of Asia. 
 The decision which was come to is worthy of ever- 
 lasting record. Although homely in its words, it 
 will be mighty in its effects long after we are 
 mouldering in the dust. It was as follows : 
 
 " Resolution of Government, dated 1th March 1835. 
 
 " The governor general of India in council has 
 attentively considered the two letters from the se- 
 cretary to the committee, dated the 21st and 22d 
 January last, and the papers referred to in them. 
 
 " 2d. His lordship in council is of opinion that 
 the great object of the British government ought 
 to be the promotion of European literature and 
 science amongst the natives of India, and that all 
 the funds appropriated for the purposes of edu- 
 cation would be best employed on English educa- 
 tion alone. 
 
 " 3d. But it is not the intention of his lord- 
 ship in council to abolish any college or school of 
 native learning, while the native population shall 
 appear to be inclined to avail themselves of the 
 
14 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 advantages which it affords ; and his lordship in 
 council directs that all the existing professors and 
 students at all the institutions under the superin- 
 tendence of the committee shall continue to re- 
 ceive their stipends. But his lordship in council 
 decidedly objects to the practice which has hitherto 
 prevailed, of supporting the students during the 
 period of their education. He conceives that the 
 only effect of such a system can be to give artifi- 
 cial encouragement to branches of learning which, 
 in the natural course of things, would be super- 
 seded by more useful studies ; and he directs that 
 no stipend shall be given to any student who may 
 hereafter enter at any of these institutions, and 
 that when any professor of oriental learning shall 
 vacate his situation, the committee shall report to 
 the government the number and state of the class, 
 in order that the government may be able to decide 
 upon the expediency of appointing a successor. 
 
 " 4th. It has come to the knowledge of the 
 governor general in council that a large sum has 
 been expended by the committee in the printing 
 of oriental works. His lordship in council directs 
 that no portion of the funds shall hereafter be so 
 employed. 
 
 " 5th. His lordship in council directs, that all 
 the funds which these reforms will leave at the 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 15 
 
 disposal of the committee be henceforth employed 
 in imparting to the native population a knowledge 
 of English literature and science, through the 
 medium of the English language; and his lord- 
 ship in council requests the committee to submit 
 to government with all expedition a plan for the 
 accomplishment of this purpose. 
 
 66 (A true copy.) 
 " (Signed) H. T. PRINSEP, 
 
 " Sec^ to Government." 
 
 This decision was followed by a series of cor- 
 responding measures. The former president of 
 the committee, seeing the turn affairs were taking, 
 had handsomely offered to resign in favor of any 
 one whose views were more in accordance with 
 the prevailing opinions, continuing however to 
 render very valuable assistance as a member of 
 the committee.* Mr. Macaulay had been appointed 
 to the vacant post Two of the members most 
 warmly attached to the oriental side of the ques- 
 tion now gave in their resignation, and several 
 new members were appointed, whose views coin- 
 
 * Intelligence has lately reached England of the death of 
 Mr. Henry Shakespear, the gentleman alluded to ; and I feel a 
 melancholy pleasure in recording a circumstance so remarkably 
 illustrating the spirit of equity and of quiet unobtrusive public 
 feeling which breathed through all his actions. India did not 
 contain a more amiable or excellent man. 
 
16 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 cided with those of the government. The natives 
 also were now for the first time admitted to take 
 a share in the deliberations on the subject of 
 national instruction. This was done by conferring 
 on the managers of the Hindu college the pri- 
 vilege of electing two of their number in rotation 
 as members of the committee, and a Mohammedan 
 gentleman was soon after appointed a member of it. 
 Six new seminaries were immediately established 
 with a portion of the fund which had been placed 
 at the disposal of the committee by the cessation of 
 the Arabic and Sanskrit printing and translating, 
 and six more were established at the commencement 
 of the following year. Rules were devised for bring- 
 ing the proceedings in the provincial seminaries pe- 
 riodically under the review of the general commit- 
 tee, and for stimulating exertion by rewarding the 
 most deserving students. It was resolved to annex 
 a good library to each seminary, and a large sup- 
 ply of books suited to all ages was ordered from 
 England. By permitting every body to make use 
 of the books on payment of a fixed subscription, 
 these libraries have become the means of dif- 
 fusing knowledge much beyond the immediate 
 circle of the government seminaries, and being 
 now objects of general interest, many valuable 
 contributions are from time to time made to 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 17 
 
 them.* Scientific apparatus of various kinds was 
 ordered from England. Professor Peacock, of Tri- 
 nity college, Cambridge, at the request of the 
 committee, selected and sent out the mathematical 
 class books required at the different institutions. 
 Arrangements were made with the school-book 
 society for the publication of a book of selections 
 from the English poets, from Chaucer downwards, 
 and the expediency of publishing a corresponding 
 volume in prose is now under consideration. 
 
 When these operations commenced there were 
 fourteen seminaries under the control of the Com- 
 mittee : there are now forty. At the first-men- 
 tioned period there were about 3,398 pupils, of 
 whom 1,818 were learning English, 218 Arabic, 
 and 473 Sanskrit. There are now upwards of 
 6,000. The number of Sanskrit and Arabic stu- 
 dents is smaller than before. A small number 
 study Persian, or learn the vernacular language 
 only; all the rest receive an English education. 
 The seminary which was last established com- 
 pletely exhausted the funds at the disposal of the 
 
 * As most young men take out a stock of books with them to 
 India, while few bring any back, the common English standard 
 works have accumulated there to a great extent. The public 
 libraries which have been established by the committee in the prin- 
 cipal towns form a nucleus round which these and many other 
 books collect. 
 
18 
 
 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 committee. It was for the district of Dinajpoor, 
 which is computed to contain 6,000 square miles, 
 above 12,000 towns and villages, and a population 
 exceeding 2,300,000 ; and it is a district remark- 
 able even in Bengal for the darkness of the igno- 
 rance which prevails in it. Though many of the 
 leading inhabitants concurred with the European 
 authorities in desiring that some effectual steps 
 should be taken to enlighten this part of the 
 country, the utmost the committee was able to 
 afford was seventy rupees a month. 
 
 As the general superintendence of the system 
 is vested in a " general committee/' residing at 
 Calcutta, so the management of each particular 
 seminary is intrusted to a local committee resi- 
 ding on the spot. The members of these com- 
 mittees are appointed by the government from all 
 classes of the community, native as well as Euro- 
 pean. Care is taken in the selection to secure 
 for the support of the system as much zeal, influ- 
 ence, and information as possible, and nobody 
 who has the cause at heart, and can really aid it, 
 need be without a share in the management. It 
 is the wish of the general committee to employ 
 the government fund only in the payment of the 
 salaries of teachers; by this means the perma- 
 nence of the institutions will be secured, at the 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 19 
 
 same time that full scope will be left for the exer- 
 cise of private munificence ; and as the outlay of 
 the committee will be confined to fixed payments, 
 easily susceptible of control, no inconvenience will 
 be likely to ensue from the wide extension of the 
 system. The pupils themselves are expected to 
 pay for the ordinary school-books used by them, 
 and it is intended to demand a small fixed sum in 
 part of payment for their instruction. More regu- 
 lar attendance is thus secured ; nominal students, 
 who injure the discipline and retard the pro- 
 gress of the institutions, become rare; the sys- 
 tem is raised in general estimation, and additional 
 means are acquired for improving and extending 
 it. Boarding-houses are beginning to be estab- 
 lished in connection with some of the seminaries, 
 for the accommodation of pupils who reside at a 
 distance. 
 
 In all the new institutions the important prin- 
 ciple has been established of admitting boys of 
 every caste without distinction. A different prac- 
 tice prevailed in the older institutions; the 
 Sanskrit colleges were appropriated to Brahmins; 
 the Arabic colleges, with a few exceptions, to 
 Mohammedans; and even at the Anglo-Indian 
 institution, which goes by the name of the Hindu 
 college, none but Hindus of good caste were ad* 
 
20 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 mitted. This practice was found to encourage the 
 prejudice which it was meant to conciliate. The 
 opposite practice has been attended with no incon- 
 venience of any kind; Christian, Mohammedan, 
 and Hindu boys, of every shade of colour and 
 variety of descent, may be seen standing side by 
 side in the same class, engaged in the common 
 pursuit of English literature, contending for the 
 same honours, and forced to acknowledge the 
 existence of superior merit in their comrades of 
 the lowest, as well as in those of the highest caste. 
 This is a great point gained. The artificial insti- 
 tution of caste cannot long survive the period when 
 the youth of India, instead of being trained to 
 observe it, shall be led by the daily habit of their 
 lives to disregard it. All we have to do is to 
 bring them together, to impress the same charac- 
 ter on them, and to leave the yielding and affec- 
 tionate mind of youth to its natural impulse. 
 Habits of friendly communication will thus be 
 established between all classes, they will insen- 
 sibly become one people, and the process of 
 enlightening our subjects will proceed simul- 
 taneously with that of uniting them among them- 
 selves. 
 
 In the long discussions which preceded the 
 change in the plan of the committee, there was 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 21 
 
 one point on which all parties were agreed : this 
 was, that the vernacular languages contained 
 neither the literary nor scientific information 
 necessary for a liberal education. It was ad- 
 mitted on all sides that while the instruction of 
 the mass of the people through the medium of 
 their own language was the ultimate object to be 
 kept in view, yet, meanwhile, teachers had to be 
 trained, a literature had to be created, and the 
 co-operation of the upper and middle classes of 
 native society had to be secured. The question 
 which divided the committee was, What language 
 was the best instrument for the accomplishment of 
 these great objects? Half the members con- 
 tended that it was English, the other half that it 
 was Sanskrit and Arabic. As there was no dis- 
 pute about the vernacular language, no mention 
 was made of it in the resolution of the 7th March 
 1835, which contained the decision of the govern- 
 ment. This omission led many, who were not 
 acquainted with the course the discussion had 
 taken, to fear that the point had been altogether 
 overlooked; and in order to obviate this misap- 
 prehension the committee made the following 
 remarks, in the first annual report submitted by 
 them to the government after the promulgation 
 of the resolution referred to : 
 
22 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 " We are deeply sensible of the importance of 
 encouraging the cultivation of the vernacular lan- 
 guages. We do not conceive that the order of the 
 7th of March precludes us from doing this, and 
 we have constantly acted on this construction. In 
 the discussions which preceded that order, the 
 claims of the vernacular languages were broadly 
 and prominently admitted by all parties, and the 
 question submitted for the decision of government, 
 only concerned the relative advantage of teaching 
 English on the one side, and the learned eastern 
 languages on the other. We therefore conceive 
 that the phrases European literature and sci- 
 ence,' ' English education alone,' and * imparting 
 to the native population a knowledge of English 
 literature and science through the medium of the 
 English language,' are intended merely to secure 
 the preference to European learning taught 
 through the medium of the English language, 
 over oriental learning taught through the medium 
 of the Sanskrit and Arabic languages, as regards 
 the instruction of those natives who receive a 
 learned education at our seminaries. These ex- 
 pressions have, as we understand them, no reference 
 to the question through what ulterior medium 
 such instruction as the mass of the people is 
 capable of receiving, is to be conveyed. If Eng- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 23 
 
 lish had been rejected, and the learned eastern 
 tongues adopted, the people must equally have 
 received their knowledge through the vernacular 
 dialects. It was therefore quite unnecessary for 
 the government, in deciding the question between 
 the rival languages, to take any notice of the ver- 
 nacular tongues, and consequently we have thought 
 that nothing could reasonably be inferred from its 
 omission to take such notice. 
 
 " We conceive the formation of a vernacular 
 literature to be the ultimate object to which all 
 our efforts must be directed. At present, the ex- 
 tensive cultivation of some foreign language, which 
 is always very improving to the mind, is rendered 
 indispensable by the almost total absence of a 
 vernacular literature, and the consequent impossi- 
 bility of obtaining a tolerable education from that 
 source only. The study of English, to which many 
 circumstances induce the natives to give the pre- 
 ference, and with it the knowledge of the learning 
 of the west, is therefore daily spreading. This, as 
 it appears to us, is the first stage in the process 
 by which India is to be enlightened. The natives 
 must learn before they can teach. The best edu- 
 cated among them must be placed in possession of 
 our knowledge, before they can transfer it into 
 their own language. We trust that the number 
 
24 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 of such translations will now multiply every year. 
 As the superiority of European learning becomes 
 more generally appreciated, the demand for them 
 will no doubt increase, and we shall be able to 
 encourage any good books which may be brought 
 out in the native languages by adopting them 
 extensively in our seminaries. 
 
 " A teacher of the vernacular language of the 
 province is already attached to several of our in- 
 stitutions, and we look to this plan soon becoming 
 general. We have also endeavoured to secure the 
 means of judging for ourselves of the degree of 
 attention which is paid to this important branch 
 of instruction, by requiring that the best transla- 
 tions from English into the vernacular language, 
 and vice versa, should be sent to us after each 
 annual examination, and if they seem to deserve 
 it, a pecuniary prize is awarded by us to the 
 authors of them." 
 
 These views were entirely approved by the 
 government, and have since been steadily acted 
 upon by the committee. One or more teachers 
 of the vernacular language of the district form a 
 regular part of the establishment of each English 
 school, (at the Hoogly college there are as many 
 as ten,) and pains are taken to give the pupils the 
 habit of writing it with facility and propriety. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 25 
 
 The instructions to the local committees on this 
 head are, " that the pupils should be constantly 
 exercised in translating into their own language, 
 as well as into English, from the time they enter 
 the seminaries till their departure ; and that 
 they should also practise original composition in 
 both languages as soon as their minds have 
 been sufficiently opened to attempt it with ad- 
 vantage." 
 
 The revenue authorities took advantage of the 
 establishment of the new provincial seminaries to 
 carry into effect a plan, which had beenpreviously 
 attempted without success, for securing a proper 
 education for the numerous wards of the govern- 
 ment. Rules were laid down for this purpose. 
 The wards are either to be brought up at the 
 nearest seminary, or to be provided with tutors 
 and books for their instruction at their own homes. 
 Their attention is to be particularly directed to 
 those branches of knowledge which have an ob- 
 vious bearing on the good management and im- 
 provement of their estates ; and their progress in 
 their studies is to be periodically tested and re- 
 ported on. There is, perhaps, no part of the 
 world where so much wealth and influence is pos- 
 sessed by persons so little able to make a good use 
 
26 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 of it as in the interior of Bengal.* The substi- 
 tution of a single humane and enlightened land* 
 lord would be a blessing to a whole neighbourhood. 
 The elevation of the character of the whole class 
 would be a national benefit of the first magnitude. 
 A great deal has been said about the advantage of 
 having English landholders, but till lately nothing 
 has been done to render the native landholders, 
 who must always be the majority, more fit for the 
 performance of their duties. In Bengal, owing 
 to the indolent and intemperate habits, and conse- 
 quent early deaths of many of the great zemindars, 
 minorities are frequent, and a large proportion of 
 the landed property of the country falls under 
 the management of the government in the course 
 of a few years. In the western provinces, where 
 landed property exists in a more wholesome form, 
 a new settlement for thirty years has given peace 
 of mind, leisure, and comparative opulence to the 
 agricultural classes. If these circumstances are 
 
 * As by the permanent settlement we have put the agricultural 
 classes into the hands of the Bengal zemindars, we are bound, as 
 far as we are able, to qualify the latter to exercise their power 
 aright. The new men who have purchased their estates under 
 our system are, as a class, friendly to improvement ; but when 
 they take up their abode in parts of the country where there are 
 no means of obtaining a tolerable education, they become after 
 a generation or two as ignorant and bigoted as the rest. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 27 
 
 properly taken advantage of, we shall ere long be 
 able to make a salutary impression on this most 
 important part of the community. 
 
 While the general question of native education 
 was debated in the committee, a distinct but 
 deeply interesting branch of the subject under- 
 went a similar examination elsewhere. The in- 
 struction of the natives in the medical art had 
 hitherto been provided for as follows. The sys- 
 tems of Galen and Hippocrates, and of the 
 Shasters, with the addition of a few scraps of 
 European medical science, was taught in classes 
 which had been attached for that purpose to the 
 Arabic and Sanskrit colleges at Calcutta. There 
 was also a separate institution at Calcutta, the 
 object of which was to train up " native doctors," 
 or assistants to the European medical officers. 
 There was only one teacher attached to this in- 
 stitution, and he delivered his lectures in Hin- 
 dus thanee. The only medical books open to the 
 pupils were a few short tracts which had been 
 translated for their use into that language; the 
 only dissection practised was that of the inferior 
 animals. It is obvious that the knowledge com- 
 municated by such imperfect means could neither 
 be complete nor practical. 
 
 Much public benefit had been derived in the 
 c 2 
 
28 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 judicial and revenue administration from the 
 substitution of cheap native, for dear European 
 agency. Lord William Bentinck now proposed to 
 extend this plan to the medical department, and 
 to raise up a class of native medical practitioners, 
 educated on sound European principles, to super- 
 sede the native quacks who, unacquainted with 
 anatomy or the simplest principles of chemical 
 action, prey on the people, and hesitate not to use 
 the most dangerous drugs and poisons. Physi- 
 cians and surgeons, however, were not to be had 
 ready-made, like judges and collectors. A profes- 
 sional education was necessary, and it was doubtful 
 whether the natives would submit to the condi- 
 tions which this education implied. A committee 
 was therefore appointed to inquire into and report 
 on the subject. 
 
 After a careful investigation, the committee 
 came to the conclusion that it was perfectly 
 feasible to educate native medical men on broad 
 European principles, some of whom might be 
 gradually substituted for the foreign practitioners 
 at the civil and military stations, and others might 
 be sent out among the mass of their countrymen, 
 to give them the inestimable blessing of enlight- 
 ened medical attendance. With regard to prac- 
 tical human anatomy, they stated it as their opinion 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 29 
 
 that " times are much changed, and the diffi- 
 culties that stood in the way appear no longer 
 insurmountable;" and they considered a knowledge 
 of the English language to be a necessary previous 
 qualification in the pupils, " because that language 
 combines within itself the circle of all the sciences, 
 and incalculable wealth of printed works and 
 illustrations; circumstances that give it obvious 
 advantages over the oriental languages, in which 
 are only to be found the crudest elements of 
 science, or the most irrational substitutes for it." 
 
 This point, however, was not attained without 
 encountering a sharp opposition. The superin- 
 tendent of the medical institution, a learned and 
 enthusiastic orientalist, set in array the arguments 
 of his party, and confidently predicted the failure 
 of every attempt to remodel the institution on the 
 principles advocated by the medical committee. 
 The Rev. Mr. (now Doctor) Duff, to whom the 
 cause of sound learning and true religion in the 
 East is deeply indebted, took up the opposite side. 
 The battle which had been so well contested in 
 the education committee was fought over again 
 in this new field ; but I must refer to the extract 
 from the medical committee's report in the ap- 
 pendix for the substance of what was said on both 
 sides. 
 
 c 3 
 
30 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 In accordance with the recommendation of this 
 committee, the old medical institution and the 
 Arabic and Sanskrit medical classes were abo- 
 lished, and an entirely new college was founded, in 
 which the various branches of medical science culti- 
 vated in Europe are taught on the most approved 
 European system. The establishment of professors, 
 the library, the museum, are on the most liberal 
 scale. A hospital is about to be opened on the 
 premises belonging to the college, for the purpose 
 of giving the students the advantage of clinical 
 instruction. Distinguished pupils are drafted from 
 the different provincial seminaries to the medical 
 college, and it is intended to establish dispen- 
 saries, including the necessary provision for vacci- 
 nation and for the treatment of surgical cases, at 
 the principal towns in the interior, which will be 
 placed under the charge of young men who have 
 been educated at the college. European medical 
 science will thus strike root at once in many dif- 
 ferent parts of Gangetic India, and the knowledge 
 acquired at the new institution will be employed 
 from the earliest possible period in alleviating the 
 sufferings of the people. Of all the late measures 
 for the promotion of education in India, this alone 
 was adopted in anticipation of the effectual de- 
 mand; and the stipends, which had always been 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 31 
 
 allowed to medical students, must therefore be 
 continued until the advantages to be derived from 
 the college by persons wishing to qualify them* 
 selves for the medical profession become more 
 generally evident The professional training at 
 that institution is carried so much beyond the 
 period usually allotted to education in India, that, 
 without this assistance, the poverty or indifference 
 of the parents would often cause the studies of 
 the young men, particularly when they come from 
 a distance, to be brought to a premature close. 
 
 This noble institution is succeeding to the full 
 extent of the most sanguine expectations which 
 had been formed of it. The pupils are animated 
 by the most lively professional zeal, and they 
 evince a degree of quickness and intelligence in 
 the prosecution of their studies which has perhaps 
 never been surpassed. Mr. James Prinsep, who 
 tested the proficiency of the chemical class at the 
 last examination, reported officially as follows: 
 " In the first place, I may remark generally, that 
 all the essays are extremely creditable. Indeed, 
 the extent and accuracy of the information on 
 the single subject selected to test the abilities 
 of the pupils has far surpassed my expectations ; 
 and I do not think that in Europe any class of 
 chemical pupils would be found capable of passing 
 c 4 
 
32 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 a better examination for the time they have at- 
 tended lectures, nor, indeed, that an equal number 
 of boys would be found so nearly on a par in their 
 acquirements. The differences are those rather 
 of different age, different natural ability, or reten- 
 tion of memory. The faults of explanation are 
 trifling. Grammatical errors are more numerous, 
 but allowance must be made for them in boys 
 writing in a foreign tongue, in the rudiments of 
 which they have been unequally instructed. 
 
 " Many of the papers show that, besides at- 
 tending to the words of the lecturer, the writers 
 have studied his manual, indeed some seem almost 
 to use his very words ; but I by no means regard 
 this as a fault ; on the contrary, it proves attention 
 and interest in the subject of their studies. One 
 or two go farther, and quote other authorities, to 
 which they must have had recourse in their 
 reading up ; and as it could not be known what 
 subject would be placed before them, this betokens 
 a considerable acquaintance with chemical authors. 
 One pupil, indeed, details the whole series of toxi- 
 cological tests for discovering arsenical poisons; 
 and I should be inclined to award the highest 
 place to him, were there not some inaccuracies in 
 his too brief notice of the general properties of 
 the metal." Mr. James Prinsep is secretary to 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 33 
 
 the Asiatic Society, and is well known for his 
 scientific attainments. His testimony is the more 
 gratifying, because he is attached to the oriental 
 class of opinions, and was one of the two members 
 who seceded from the committee when it was 
 resolved to take a decided course in favour of 
 English. 
 
 The peculiar glory of the medical college, how- 
 ever, consists in the victory which it has obtained 
 over the most intractable of the national pre- 
 judices, which often survives a change of religion, 
 and was supposed to be interwoven, if any thing 
 could be, with the texture itself of the Hindu 
 mind. Brahmins and other high-caste Hindus 
 may be seen in the dissecting-room of the college 
 handling the knife, and demonstrating from the 
 human subject, with even more than the indiffer- 
 ence of European professional men. Operations 
 at the sight of which English students not unfre- 
 quently faint, are regarded with the most eager 
 interest, and without any symptom of loathing, by 
 the self-possessed Hindu. Subjects for dissection 
 are easily and unobjectionably obtained in a 
 country in which human life is more than usually 
 precarious, and where the respect felt for the 
 dead is much less than in Europe. An injection 
 of arsenic into the veins prevents that rapid de- 
 c 5 
 
34 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 composition which the heat of the climate would 
 otherwise engender. There is now nothing to 
 prevent the people of India from attaining to the 
 highest eminence in the medical art ; and we shall 
 soon be able to make the college entirely national, 
 by replacing the foreign by indigenous professors. 
 The importance of this remarkable step in the 
 progress of native improvement is so generally 
 acknowledged, that even the Hindus of the old 
 school have given in their adherence to the medi- 
 cal college; and the Shasters, with the elasticity 
 peculiar to them, have been made to declare that 
 the dissection of human bodies for medical pur- 
 poses is not prohibited by them. The establish- 
 ment of the medical college has received the 
 approbation of the Court of Directors ; they have 
 indeed reason to be proud of it as one of the chief 
 ornaments of their administration. 
 
 Besides settling the principle of national educa- 
 tion, Lord William Bentinck prepared the means 
 of ultimately extending it to the mass of the 
 people. He justly considered that, to place this 
 great work on a solid foundation, it was necessary 
 to ascertain the exact nature and extent of the 
 popular wants, the difficulties and the facilities of 
 the task, and the local peculiarities which might 
 require a partial change of plan. Our know- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 35 
 
 ledge of the existing state of feeling and of men- 
 tal cultivation in the principal towns was suffi- 
 ciently accurate to enable us to proceed with con- 
 fidence, as far as they were concerned ; but more 
 minute information was necessary before we could 
 venture to extend our operations from town to 
 country, from the few with whom the European 
 society are in direct communication to the body 
 of the people. Mr. William Adam, a gentleman 
 distinguished for his accurate and methodical 
 habits of mind, and for his intimate acquaintance 
 with the natives and their languages, was there- 
 fore appointed to make a searching inquiry into 
 the existing state of native education in the in- 
 terior. Mr. Adam has ever since been employed 
 on his educational survey, and has visited many 
 different districts, average specimens of which he 
 has subjected to a strict analysis. 
 
 Meanwhile all the materials of a national sys- 
 tem of education are fast accumulating ; teachers 
 are trained; books are multiplied; the interest 
 felt in the subject is strengthening and spreading ; 
 and the upper class of natives in the towns are 
 being prepared to aid by their influence and ex- 
 ample in the enlightening of the lower classes 
 in the country. 
 
 c 6 
 
36 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 The Study of Foreign Languages and Literature a 
 powerful Instrument of National Improvement. 
 The Instruction of the upper and middle Classes the 
 first Object. 
 
 THE past history of the world authorizes us to 
 believe that the movement which is taking place 
 in India, if properly directed and supported by 
 the Government, will end in bringing about a 
 decided change for the better in the character of 
 the people. The instances in which nations have 
 worked their way to a high degree of civilization 
 from domestic resources only are extremely rare, 
 compared with those in which the impulse has 
 been communicated from without, and has been 
 supported by the extensive study and imitation of 
 the literature of foreign countries. The cases in 
 which the most lasting impressions have been 
 made upon national character, in which the supe- 
 rior civilization of one country has taken deepest 
 root and fructified most abundantly in other 
 countries, have a strong general resemblance to 
 the case before us. In those cases the foreign sys- 
 tems of learning were first studied in the original 
 tongue by the upper and middle classes, who alone 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 37 
 
 possessed the necessary leisure. From this fol- 
 lowed a diffusion of the knowledge contained in 
 the foreign literature, a general inclination of the 
 national taste towards it, and an assimilation of 
 the vernacular language, by the introduction into 
 it of numerous scientific and other terms. Last 
 of all, the vernacular tongue began to be culti- 
 vated in its improved state; translations and imi- 
 tations sprang up in abundance, and creative 
 genius occasionally caught the impulse, and struck 
 out a masterpiece of its own. 
 
 Every scholar knows to what a great extent the 
 Romans cultivated Grecian literature, and adopted 
 Grecian models of taste. It was only after the 
 national mind had become deeply impregnated 
 from this source, that they began to have a litera- 
 ture of their own. The writers of the Augustan 
 age were bred in the school, were animated by the 
 spirit, were nourished with the food of conquered 
 Greece. Virgil was a mere imitator, however 
 noble : the Roman dramas are feeble transla- 
 tions from the Greek : the entire Roman lite- 
 rature is only an echo of the Greek literature. 
 The Romans made no scruple in acknowledging 
 the obligations they were under to the cultivation 
 of Grecian learning. Their enthusiasm was di- 
 rected to the object of enriching their native 
 
38 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 language with all that, in that age of the world, 
 could be imported from abroad. 
 
 It is a curious fact that an intellectual revo- 
 lution similar to that which is now in progress in 
 India, actually took place among the Romans. 
 At an early period, the Etruscan was, as Livy tells 
 us, the language which the young Romans studied. 
 No patrician was considered as liberally educated 
 who had not learned in the sacred books of the 
 augurs of Clusium and Volaterrae, how to quarter 
 the heavens, what was meant by the appearance 
 of a vulture on the left hand, and what rites were 
 to be performed on a spot which had been smitten 
 by thunder. This sort of knowledge very ana- 
 lagous to the knowledge which is contained in the 
 Sanskrit books, was considered as the most 
 valuable learning, until an increased acquaintance 
 with the Greek language produced a complete 
 change. Profound speculations on morals, legis- 
 lation, and government; lively pictures of human 
 life and manners; pure and energetic models of 
 political eloquence, drove out the jargon of a 
 doting superstition. If we knew more minutely 
 the history of that change, we should probably 
 find that it was vehemently resisted by very dis- 
 tinguished Etruscan scholars, and that all sorts of 
 fearful consequences were represented as inevit- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 3# 
 
 able, if the old learning about the flight of birds 
 and the entrails of beasts should be abandoned 
 for Homer, and if the mysteries of the bidental 
 should be neglected for Thucydides and Plato. 
 
 The Roman language and literature, thus en- 
 riched and improved, was destined to still prouder 
 triumphs. The inhabitants of the greatest part 
 of Europe and of the North of Africa, educated 
 in every respect like the Romans, became in every 
 respect equal to them. The impression which 
 was then made will never be effaced. It sank so 
 deep into the language and habits of the people, 
 that Latin to this day forms the basis of the 
 tongues of France and southern Europe, and the 
 Roman law the basis of their jurisprudence. The 
 barbarous hordes which triumphed over the arms, 
 yielded to the arts of Rome. Roman literature 
 survived the causes which led to its diffusion, and 
 even spread beyond the ancient limits of the em- 
 pire. The Poles and Hungarians were led neither 
 by any pressure from without, nor by any artificial 
 encouragement from within, to make Latin their 
 language of education, of literature, of business, 
 and, to a very remarkable extent, of ordinary col- 
 loquial intercourse. They did so, we may presume, 
 because their own language contained nothing 
 worth knowing, while Latin included within itself 
 
40 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 almost all the knowledge which at that time ex- 
 isted in the world. 
 
 After this came the great revival of learning, 
 at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning 
 of the sixteenth centuries. At that period, the 
 historian Robertson observes, " all the modern 
 languages were in a state extremely barbar- 
 ous, devoid of elegance, of vigour, and even 
 of perspicuity. No author thought of writing 
 in language so ill adapted to express and em- 
 bellish his sentiments, or of erecting a work for 
 immortality with such rude and perishable mate- 
 rials. As the spirit which prevailed at that time 
 did not owe its rise to any original effort of the 
 human mind, but was excited chiefly by admira- 
 tion of the ancients, which began then to be 
 studied with attention in every part of Europe, 
 their compositions were deemed not only the 
 standards of taste and of sentiment, but of style ; 
 and even the languages in which they wrote were 
 thought to be peculiar, and almost consecrated to 
 learning and the muses. Not only the manner of 
 the ancients was imitated, but their language was 
 adopted; and, extravagant as the attempt may 
 appear, to write in a dead tongue, in which men 
 were not accustomed to think, and which they 
 could not speak, or even pronounce, the success 
 
1HE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 41 
 
 of it was astonishing. As they formed their style 
 upon the purest models ; as they were uninfected 
 with those barbarisms, which the inaccuracy of 
 familiar conversation, the affectation of courts, 
 intercourse with strangers, and a thousand other 
 causes, introduce into living languages, many 
 moderns have attained to a degree of elegance in 
 their Latin compositions which the Romans them- 
 selves scarce possessed beyond the limits of the 
 Augustan age." 
 
 Had the mental stimulus produced by the re- 
 vival of letters been confined to scholars, the pro- 
 gress of improvement would have stopped at this 
 point ; but all who had time to read, whether they 
 knew Latin or not, felt the influence of the move- 
 ment, and this great class was receiving continual 
 additions from the rapid increase of wealth. 
 Hence arose a demand which the classical lan- 
 guages could not satisfy, and from this demand 
 sprang the vernacular literature of Europe. We 
 are indebted to foreign nations and distant ages 
 both for the impulse which struck it out, and for 
 the writings which warmed the fancy and formed 
 the taste of its founders. Abounding, as we are, 
 in intellectual wealth, could we venture even now 
 to tell our youth that they have no longer occa- 
 sion to seek for nourishment from the stores of 
 
42 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish, and 
 Italian literatures? The French fell into a mis- 
 take of this kind, and they have suffered for it. 
 Proud of the honour, and sensible of the political 
 advantage of having their own language generally 
 understood, they were not sufficiently alive to the 
 new resources they might have derived from the 
 study of foreign languages.* Their literature, 
 therefore, wants that copiousness and variety 
 which is characteristic of the English and Ger- 
 man. Now they see their error, and, instead of 
 confining themselves to their own stores, and 
 copying and re-copying their own models, they 
 have begun to look abroad and study the master- 
 pieces of other nations. German literature is a 
 remarkable instance of the success with which 
 industry and genius may nationalize foreign ma- 
 terials. It has arisen, almost within the memory 
 of persons now living, on the basis of the astonish- 
 ing erudition collected by the German writers 
 from every living and dead language worth laying 
 under contribution. 
 
 Had our ancestors acted as the committee of pub- 
 
 * It has been justly observed, that for the French to pride 
 themselves upon all foreign nations studying their language, while 
 they study the language of no foreign nation, is like a blind man 
 boasting that every body can see him, while he can see nobody. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 43 
 
 lie instruction acted up to March 1835* ; " had they 
 neglected the language of Thucydides and Plato, 
 and the language of Cicero and Tacitus ; had they 
 confined their attention to the old dialects of our 
 own island ; had they printed nothing and taught 
 nothing at the universities but chronicles in Anglo- 
 Saxon, and romances in Norman French, would 
 England ever have been what she now is ? What 
 the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries 
 of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people 
 of India. The literature of England is now more 
 valuable than that of classical antiquity. I doubt 
 whether the Sanskrit literature be as valuable as 
 that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors ; in 
 some departments, in history, for example, I am 
 certain that it is much less so. 
 
 Another instance may be said to be still before 
 our eyes. Within the last hundred and twenty 
 years a nation, which had previously been in a 
 state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors 
 were before the crusades, has gradually emerged 
 from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has 
 taken its place among civilized communities. I 
 speak of Russia. There is now in that country a 
 
 * This is taken from one of the papers recorded during the 
 discussions which preceded the resolution of the 7th March 1835. 
 I shall hereafter make several similar extracts. 
 
44 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 large educated class, abounding with persons fit 
 to serve the state in the highest functions, and in 
 nowise inferior to the most accomplished men 
 who adorn the best circles of Paris and London. 
 There is reason to hope that this vast empire, 
 which in the time of our grandfathers was pro- 
 bably behind the Punjab, may in the time of 
 of our grandchildren be pressing close on 
 France and Britain in the career of improve- 
 ment. And how was this change effected ? Not 
 by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding 
 the mind of the young Muscovite with the old 
 women's stories which his rude fathers had be- 
 lieved; not by filling his head with lying legends 
 about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging him to 
 study the great question, whether the world was 
 or was not created on the 13th of September; not 
 by calling him " a learned native " when he had 
 mastered all these points of knowledge; but by 
 teaching him those foreign languages in which the 
 greatest mass of information had been laid up, 
 and thus putting all ,that information within his 
 reach. The languages of western Europe civilized 
 Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the 
 Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar." 
 
 The literary epoch of the Arabians dates from 
 the time at which they commenced the study of the 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 45 
 
 Grecian writers. That the impulse was not stronger 
 or more permanent, is owing, perhaps, to the 
 partial use which they made of this great instru- 
 ment of national improvement. If, instead of con- 
 tenting themselves with meagre translations of 
 some of the Greek philosophers, they had studied 
 Plato and Xenophon, Homer and Thucydides, in 
 the original, a flame of generous liberty might have 
 been kindled, and a new direction might have been 
 given at that period to the views and feelings of 
 the people of the East, the possible effects of which 
 up to the present day it is impossible to calculate. 
 * The Arabs pursued a very different course in 
 
 * Gibbon observes on this point : " The Moslems deprived 
 themselves of the principal benefits of a familiar intercourse with 
 Greece and Rome, the knowledge of antiquity, the purity of taste, 
 and the freedom of thought. Confident in the riches of their 
 native tongue, the Arabians disdained the study of any foreign 
 idiom. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the bless- 
 ings and asserted the rights of civil and religious freedom. Their 
 moral and political writings might have gradually unlocked the 
 fetters of eastern despotism, diffused a liberal spirit of inquiry and 
 toleration, and encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect that their 
 caliph was a tyrant, and their prophet an impostor. To the thirst 
 of martyrdom, the vision of paradise, and the belief of predestina- 
 tion, we must ascribe the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and 
 people ; and the sword of the Saracens became less formidable 
 when their youth was drawn away from the camp to the college, 
 when the armies of the faithful presumed to read and reflect. Yet 
 the foolish vanity of the Greeks was jealous of their studies, and 
 reluctantly imparted the sacred fire to the barbarians of the East." 
 These Moslems were only the neighbours of the lower empire, 
 
46 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 their intercourse with the various nations included 
 within their dominions. They extolled the beauty 
 of their own language, and gave the utmost en- 
 couragement to the cultivation of it. The effect 
 was not universally beneficial, because many of 
 the subject races were already in a more advanced 
 stage of civilization than the Arabs themselves ; 
 but it was such as exemplified, in a very remark- 
 able way, the extent to which the study of a new 
 language and literature may remould national 
 character. Arabic literature became the literature 
 of all the conquered nations; their dialects were 
 saturated with Arabic words ; their habits of 
 thought, their manners, their whole character, 
 became conformed to the same standard. Reli- 
 gion has, no doubt, a great deal to do with the 
 striking uniformity which prevails throughout the 
 Mohammedan world; but language and literature 
 have a great deal more to do with it There are 
 many tribes on the outskirts of Mohammedanism 
 which have conformed to the religion, without 
 adopting the learning of Islam, and they are often 
 
 and it was perhaps not in the power of the Greeks to make more 
 than a faint impression upon them. The Moslems with whom we 
 have to do are our own subjects ; and if we neglect to mitigate the 
 hostile spirit of the sect, by encouraging the disposition they evince- 
 to cultivate our literature and science, posterity will have a heavier 
 charge to bring against us than that of " foolish vanity." 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 47 
 
 not to be distinguished from the people of the 
 same tribe who have adhered to the religion of 
 their fathers, with whom they have language and 
 every thing else in common. 
 
 These are the facts upon which the plan of the 
 education committee is based. Their object is to 
 fill the minds of the liberally educated portion of 
 the people with the knowledge of Europe, in 
 order that they may interpret it in their own 
 language to the rest of their countrymen. For 
 this purpose, while, on the one hand; the pupils 
 are encouraged to acquire the various kinds of 
 information which English literature contains, 
 and to form their taste after the best English 
 models; on the other, every endeavour is used to 
 give them the habit of writing with facility and 
 elegance in their native language. 
 
 The committee's first desire is to establish a 
 seminary based on these principles at each Zillah 
 station. The large towns always take the lead in 
 the march of improvement : the class of people 
 whose circumstances give them leisure to study to 
 good purpose, and influence to make their example 
 followed, are congregated there in greater num- 
 bers than elsewhere. Even the proprietors resi- 
 ding on their estates in the district keep up a 
 close connection with their provincial capitals, 
 
48 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 where they have generally town houses and resi- 
 dent agents. The subordinate officers of govern- 
 ment are selected and sent from thence to exer- 
 cise their functions in the surrounding country. 
 The European functionaries are present there to 
 exercise a general superintendence over the semi- 
 naries, and to assist the teachers with their coun- 
 tenance and experience. By purifying the circu- 
 lation through these vital organs, the whole system 
 will be re-invigorated; the rich, the learned, the 
 men of business, will first be gained ; a new class 
 of teachers will be trained; books in the verna- 
 cular language will be multiplied ; and with these 
 accumulated means we shall in due time proceed 
 to extend our operations from town to country, 
 from the few to the many, until every hamlet 
 shall be provided with its elementary school. 
 The poor man is not less the object of the com- 
 mittee's solicitude than the rich ; but, while the 
 means at their disposal were extremely limited, 
 there were millions of all classes to be educated. 
 It was absolutely necessary to make a selection, 
 and they therefore selected the upper and middle 
 classes as the first object of their attention, 
 because, by educating them first, they would 
 soonest be able to extend the same advantages to 
 the rest of the people. They will be our school- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 49 
 
 masters, translators, authors ; none of which func- 
 tions the poor man, with his scanty stock of know- 
 ledge, is able to perform. They are the leaders 
 of the people. By adopting them first into our 
 system we shall be able to proceed a few years 
 hence, with an abundant supply of proper books 
 and instructors, and with all the wealth and influ- 
 ence of the country on our side, to establish a 
 general system of education which shall afford to 
 every person of every rank the means of acquir- 
 ing that degree of knowledge which his leisure 
 will permit. 
 
50 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 The violent Opposition made by Oriental Scholars to 
 
 the Resolution of the 1th March 1835 The whole 
 
 Question rests upon Two Points ; first, Whether 
 English or Arabic and Sanskrit Literature is best 
 calculated for the Improvement of the People of India ; 
 and secondly, Whether, supposing English Literature 
 to be best adapted for that Purpose, the Natives are 
 willing to cultivate it. These Points considered. 
 
 THE resolution of the 7th of March 1835 was passed 
 in the face of the most keen and determined 
 opposition on the part of several distinguished 
 persons whose influence had not been usually 
 exerted in vain; and their representations were 
 seconded by a petition got up by the numerous 
 class of persons whose subsistence was dependent 
 on the oriental colleges, and on the printing and 
 other operations of the committee connected with 
 them. The Asiatic Society also took up the cause 
 with great vehemence, and memorialised the local 
 government, w r hile the Court of Directors and the 
 Board of Control were pressed by strong remon- 
 strances from the Royal Asiatic Society. The spirit 
 of orientalism was stirred up to its inmost depths 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 51 
 
 and the cry of indignation of the Calcutta literati 
 was re-echoed with more than its original bitter- 
 ness from the colleges of France and Germany. 
 
 In order to understand these phenomena, it will 
 be necessary to go back a few years in the history 
 of India. When Lord Wellesley established the 
 college of Fort William, he provided munifi- 
 cently for the encouragement of oriental learning. 
 For a long time after, that learning was nearly the 
 sole test of merit among the junior members of 
 the civil service, and such military and medical 
 officers as aspired to civil employment. A su- 
 perior knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic was sure 
 to be rewarded by a good place. The reputations of * 
 many members of the government and of nearly 
 all the secretaries had been founded on this basis. 
 The literary circle of Calcutta was almost exclu- 
 sively composed of orientalists. The education 
 committee was formed when this state of things 
 was at its height, and hence the decidedly oriental 
 cast of its first proceedings. 
 
 By degrees the rage for orientalism subsided 
 among the Europeans, while the taste for European 
 literature rose to a great height among the natives. 
 A modification of the committee's proceedings 
 suited to this altered state of things was called for; 
 but the persons who had been trained under the 
 D 2 
 
52 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 old system still occupied the strongholds of the 
 administration, and motives were not wanting to 
 dispose them to an obstinate defence. The habits 
 of a long life were now for the first time broken 
 in upon. They felt as if the world were given to 
 understand that they had spent their strength for 
 nought, and that their learning was altogether 
 vanity.* The axe seemed to them to be laid at 
 the root of their reputations. This was more than 
 human nature could bear. Men who had been 
 remarkable for self-restraint completely lost their 
 temper, and those who had been accustomed to 
 give free expression to their feelings showed un- 
 usual warmth on this occasion. It was a striking 
 exhibition of character. It is true that the well- 
 earned honours of mature life had rendered seve- 
 ral of these distinguished persons independent 
 
 * Jacquemont makes the following remarks on this subject in 
 one of his letters to his father, vol. i. p. 222-3 : " Le Sanskrit 
 ne menera a rien qu'au Sanskrit. Le mechanisme de ce langage 
 est admirablement complique, et neanmoins, dit on, admirable. 
 JVlais c'est comme une de ces machines qui ne sortent pas de con- 
 servatoires et des museums, plus ingenieuses qu'utiles. Elle n'a 
 servi qu'a fabriquer de la theologie, de la metaphysique, de This- 
 toire melee de theologie, et autres billevesees du meme genre : 
 galimathias triple pour les faiseurs et pour les consommateurs, 
 pour les consommateurs etrangers surtout, galimathias ^, &c. &c. 
 La mode du Sanskrit et de Vorientalisme litteraire en general durera 
 cependant, parce que ceux qui auront passe ou perdu quinze ou 
 vingt ans a apprendre VArdbe ou le Sanskrit n'auront la candeur 
 d'avouer qu'ih possedent une science inutile." 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA* 53 
 
 of their early reputation for eastern learning* 
 But this availed nothing. The blow had gone 
 straight to the sources of their habitual feel- 
 ings, and the effect which followed was highly 
 remarkable. 
 
 The motive which led the oriental literary so- 
 cieties to take up the cause of that section of the 
 committee which supported the interests of oriental 
 literature is still more obvious. The object of the 
 Asiatic societies is to investigate the history and 
 antiquities of the East; to lay open to the European 
 world whatever the records of Asia contain to 
 illustrate and aid the progress of mind, of morals, 
 and of natural history. The object of the educa- 
 tion committee is to instruct the people of India in 
 sound knowledge and true morality. The Asiatic 
 societies are organs for making known the arts 
 and sciences of Asia to Europe. The education 
 committee is an organ for making known the arts 
 and sciences of Europe to Asia. Yet different, and, 
 to a great extent, incompatible, as these ob- 
 jects are, the education committee had acted, in 
 the main, as if it had been only a subordinate 
 branch of the Bengal Asiatic Society. The same 
 gentleman was long secretary to both. Ancient 
 learning of a kind which every body must admit 
 D 3 
 
54 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 to be more fit for an antiquarian society than for 
 a seminary of popular education was profusely 
 patronised. Extensive plans for the publication 
 of Arabic and Sanskrit works, which exceeded the 
 means of any literary association, were executed 
 out of the fund which the British parliament had 
 assigned for enlightening the people of India. 
 The full extent of this union became apparent 
 after it had been dissolved. A limb had been 
 torn from the parent trunk, and the struggle with 
 which the disruption was resisted showed how 
 intimate the connection had been. By vehemently 
 complaining of the suspension of the plans for the 
 encouragement of ancient oriental literature, the 
 literary societies virtually acknowledged the iden- 
 tity of their own operations and of the past opera- 
 tions of the education committee. 
 
 Those societies are entitled to the highest re- 
 spect, and nobody can blame them for endeavour- 
 ing to obtain support in the prosecution of the 
 laudable objects for which they are associated. 
 The responsible parties were the education com- 
 mittee and the Bengal government. It was for 
 them to consider whether the mode which had 
 been adopted of disbursing the education fund 
 was the one best suited to the accomplishment of 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 55 
 
 the object for which that fund had been instituted. 
 If it was, they had properly acquitted themselves 
 of the trust reposed in them, whether their plans 
 happened to coincide with those of the Asiatic 
 Society or not ; if it was not, some change was 
 obviously required. 
 
 This deeply important subject was long and 
 carefully examined, both by the committee and 
 the government. The decision which was come 
 to has been already related, and it is needless to 
 recount all the arguments which were used on the 
 occasion. The whole question turns upon two 
 points : the first of which is, whether English or 
 Sanskrit and Arabic literature is best calculated 
 for the enlightenment of the people of India ; the 
 other, whether, supposing English literature to 
 be best adapted for that purpose, the natives are 
 ready to avail themselves of the advantages which 
 it holds out. When these points are determined 
 the question is settled, and it is capable of being 
 settled in no other way. 
 
 The comparative state of science in European 
 and Asiatic countries might be supposed to be too 
 well known to admit of any dispute on the first 
 point; but as our opponents sometimes argue as 
 if it were still a doubtful question whether English 
 or oriental literature is most calculated to advance 
 D 4 
 
56 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the cause of human improvement, I shall appeal 
 to several authorities which will, I think, be listened 
 to with deference on this question. 
 
 The pains which the late Bishop Heber took to 
 obtain correct information on every subject which 
 had even a remote bearing on the improvement of 
 India are so well known, that nobody will be sur- 
 prised at his having left his opinion on this vital 
 point fully on record. The following is extracted 
 from his letter to Sir Wilmot Horton, dated March 
 1824, published in the appendix to his journal. 
 
 " Government has, however, been very liberal 
 in its grants, both to a society for national educa- 
 tion, and in the institution and support of two 
 colleges of Hindu students of riper age, the one 
 at Benares, the other at Calcutta. But I do not 
 think any of these institutions, in the way after 
 which they are at present conducted, likely to do 
 much good. In the elementary schools supported 
 by the former, through a very causeless and ridi- 
 culous fear of giving offence to the natives, they 
 have forbidden the use of the Scriptures or any 
 extracts from them, though the moral lessons of 
 the Gospel are read by all Hindus who can get 
 hold of them, without scruple, and with much 
 attention, and though their exclusion is tanta- 
 mount to excluding all moral instruction from 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 57 
 
 their schools, the Hindu sacred writings having 
 nothing of the kind, and, if they had, being shut 
 up from the majority of the people by the double 
 fence of a dead language, and an actual prohibi- 
 tion to read them, as too holy for common eyes or 
 ears. The defects of the latter will appear when 
 I have told you that the actual state of Hindu 
 and Mussulman literature, mutatis mutandis, very 
 nearly resembles what the literature of Europe 
 was before the time of Galileo, Copernicus, and 
 Bacon. The Mussulmans take their logic from 
 Aristotle, filtered through many successive trans- 
 lations and commentaries, and their metaphysical 
 system is professedly derived from Plato, ( c Fila- 
 toun'). The Hindus have systems not very dis- 
 similar from these, though, I am told, of greater 
 length and more intricacy ; but the studies in 
 which they spend most of their time are the 
 acquisition of the Sanskrit, and the endless refine- 
 ments of its grammar, prosody, and poetry. Both 
 have the same natural philosophy, which is also 
 that of Aristotle in zoology and botany, and Pto- 
 lemy in astronomy, for which the Hindus have 
 forsaken their more ancient notions of the seven 
 seas, the six earths, and the flat base of Padalon, 
 supported on the back of a tortoise. By the 
 science which they now possess they are some of 
 D 5 
 
58 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 them able to foretell an eclipse, or compose an 
 almanac ; and many of them derive some little 
 pecuniary advantage from pretensions to judicial 
 astrology. In medicine and chemistry they are 
 just sufficiently advanced to talk of substances 
 being moist, dry, hot, &c. in the third or fourth 
 degree ; to dissuade from letting blood or phy- 
 sicking on a Tuesday, or under a particular aspect 
 of the heavens, and to be eager in their pursuit of 
 the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of im- 
 mortality. 
 
 '* The task of enlightening the studious youth 
 of such a nation would seem to be a tolerably 
 straightforward one. But though, for the college 
 in Calcutta, (not Bishop's College, remember, but 
 the Sanskrit, or Hindu College,) an expensive set 
 of instruments has been sent out, and it seems in- 
 tended that the natural sciences should be studied 
 there, the managers of the present institution take 
 care that their boys should have as little time as 
 possible for such pursuits, by requiring from them 
 all, without exception, a laborious study of San- 
 skrit, and all the useless, and worse than useless, 
 literature of their ancestors. A good deal of this 
 has been charged (and in some little degree 
 charged with justice) against the exclusive atten- 
 tion paid to Greek and logic, till lately, in Oxford. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 59 
 
 But in Oxford we have never been guilty (since a 
 better system was known in the world at large) of 
 teaching the physics of Aristotle, however we may 
 have paid an excessive attention to his metaphysics 
 and dialectics. 
 
 " In Benares, however, I found in the institu- 
 tion supported by Government a professor lec- 
 turing on astronomy after the system of Ptolemy 
 and Albunazar, while one of the most forward 
 boys was at the pains of casting my horoscope; 
 and the majority of the school were toiling at 
 Sanskrit grammar. And yet the day before, in 
 the same holy city, I had visited another college, 
 founded lately by a wealthy Hindu banker, and 
 entrusted by him to the management of the 
 Church Missionary Society, in which, besides a 
 grammatical knowledge of the Hindusthanee lan- 
 guage, as well as Persian and Arabic, the senior 
 boys could pass a good examination in English 
 grammar, in Hume's History of England, Joyce's 
 Scientific Dialogues, the use of the globes, and 
 the principal facts and moral precepts of the 
 Gospel, most of them writing beautifully in the 
 Persian and very tolerably in the English cha- 
 racter, and excelling most boys I have met with in 
 the accuracy and readiness of their arithmetic. 
 * * * Ram Mohun Roy, a learned native, 
 D 6 
 
60 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 who has sometimes been called, though I fear 
 without reason, a Christian, remonstrated against 
 this system last year in a paper which he sent me 
 to be put into Lord Amherst's hands, and which, 
 for its good English, good sense, and forcible argu- 
 ments, is a real curiosity, as coming from an 
 Asiatic. I have not since been in Calcutta, and 
 know not whether any improvement has occurred 
 in consequence ; but from the unbounded attach- 
 ment to Sanskrit literature displayed by some of 
 those who chiefly manage those affairs, I have no 
 great expectation of the kind. Of the value of 
 the acquirements which so much is sacrificed to 
 retain I can only judge from translations, and 
 they certainly do not seem to me worth picking 
 out of the rubbish under which they were sink- 
 ing. Some of the poetry of the Mahabarat I am 
 told is good, and I think a good deal of the Ra- 
 mayuna pretty. But no work has yet been pro- 
 duced which even pretends to be authentic history. 
 No useful discoveries in science are, I believe, so 
 much as expected ; and I have no great sympathy 
 with those students who value a worthless tract 
 merely because it calls itself old, or a language 
 which teaches nothing, for the sake of its copious- 
 ness and intricacy. If I were to run wild after 
 oriental learning I should certainly follow that of 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 61 
 
 the Mussulmans, whose histories seem really very 
 much like those of Europe, and whose poetry, so 
 far as I am yet able to judge, has hardly had jus- 
 tice done to it in the ultra flowery translations 
 which have appeared in the West." 
 
 Bishop Heber's account of his visit to the 
 Sanskrit college at Benares is strikingly characte- 
 ristic of the system of public instruction described 
 in the above extract. It presents a picture which 
 would be highly amusing, if the mental and moral 
 darkness which must be the result of such a system 
 were not calculated to excite feelings of the deepest 
 melancholy. 
 
 " Suttees are less numerous in Benares than 
 many parts of India, but self-immolation by drown- 
 ing is very common. Many scores, every year, 
 of pilgrims from all parts of India come hither 
 expressly to end their days and secure their sal- 
 vation. They purchase two large Kedgeree pots, 
 between which they tie themselves, and when 
 empty these support their weight in the water. 
 Thus equipped, they paddle into the stream, then 
 fill the pots with the water which surrounds them, 
 and thus sink into eternity. Government have 
 sometimes attempted to prevent this practice, but 
 with no other effect than driving the voluntary 
 victims a little further down the river; nor in- 
 deed, when a man has come several hundred miles 
 
62 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 to die, is it likely that a police officer can prevent 
 him. Instruction seems the only way in which 
 these poor people can be improved, and that, I 
 trust, they will by degrees obtain from us. 
 
 " The Vidalaya is a large building divided into 
 two courts, galleried above and below, and full of 
 teachers and scholars, divided into a number of 
 classes, who learn reading, writing, arithmetic, (in 
 the Hindoo manner,) Persian, Hindoo law, and 
 sacred literature, Sanskrit, astronomy according to 
 the Ptolemaic system, and astrology ! There are 
 200 scholars, some of whom of all sorts came to 
 say their lessons to me, though, unhappily, I was 
 myself able to profit by none, except the astro- 
 nomy, and a little of the Persian. The astrono- 
 mical lecturer produced a terrestrial globe, divided 
 according to their system, and elevated to the 
 meridian of Benares. Mount Meru he identified 
 with the north pole, and under the southern pole 
 he supposed the tortoise "chukwa" to stand, on 
 which the earth rests. The southern hemisphere 
 he apprehended to be uninhabitable, but on its 
 concave surface, in the interior of the globe, he 
 placed Padalon. He then showed me how the 
 sun went round the earth once in every day, and 
 how, by a different but equally continuous mo- 
 tion, he also visited the signs of the zodiac. The 
 whole system is precisely that of Ptolemy, and 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 63 
 
 the contrast was very striking between the rub- 
 bish which these young men were learning in a 
 government establishment and the rudiments of 
 real knowledge which those whom I had visited 
 the day before had acquired, in the very same 
 city, and under circumstances far less favourable. 
 I was informed that it had been frequently pro- 
 posed to introduce an English and mathematical 
 class, and to teach the Newtonian and Copernican 
 system of astronomy ; but that the late superinten- 
 dent of the establishment was strongly opposed to 
 any innovation, partly on the plea that it would draw 
 the boys off from their Sanskrit studies, and partly 
 lest it should interfere with the religious preju- 
 dices of the professors. The first of these argu- 
 ments is pretty much like what was urged at 
 Oxford (substituting Greek for Sanskrit) against 
 the new examinations, by which, however, Greek 
 has lost nothing. The second is plainly absurd, 
 since the Ptolemaic system, which is now taught, 
 is itself an innovation, and an improvement on 
 the old faith of eight worlds and seven oceans, 
 arranged like a nest of foxes." 
 
 My readers may be surprised to hear that this 
 college had been "completely re-organized* "four 
 
 * Education Committee's Report, published in 1831. 
 
64 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 years before by Professor Wilson, who went on 
 deputation to Benares on purpose. But a re- 
 form conducted on oriental principles, means 
 exactly the reverse of what is usually understood 
 by a reform. In this case, correctness can be ob- 
 tained only at the expense of increased absurdity ; 
 and the nearer we approach to the standard, 
 the further we must depart from truth and 
 reason. 
 
 In the passage first quoted, Bishop Heber calls 
 attention to a paper sent to him by Ram Mohun 
 Roy to be put into Lord Amherst's hands, " which 
 for its good English, good sense, and forcible 
 arguments, is a real curiosity as coming from an 
 Asiatic." This paper was a remonstrance against 
 the establishment of the Sanskrit college at Cal- 
 cutta, which was founded by Lord Amherst, in 
 imitation of the older institution at Benares, long 
 after the natives had become awakened to the 
 value of European instruction, and had instituted 
 from their own funds, without any assistance from 
 the government, the Hindu college at Calcutta 
 and the English school at Benares described by 
 Bishop Heber, for the purpose of securing for their 
 children the benefit of such instruction. Ram 
 Mohun Roy had the improvement of his country- 
 men sincerely at heart, and he was sufficiently 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 65 
 
 acquainted both with oriental and European lite- 
 rature to be able to form a correct opinion of 
 their relative value. His address to Lord Am- 
 herst on this occasion deserves the eulogium be- 
 stowed on it by Bishop Heber; and as it is quite 
 to the point, I shall quote it entire. 
 
 " To His Excellency the Right Honourable 
 Lord Amherst, Governor General in 
 Council. 
 
 " My Lord, 
 
 " Humbly reluctant as the natives of India are 
 to obtrude upon the notice of government the 
 sentiments they entertain on any public measure, 
 there are circumstances when silence would be 
 carrying this respectful feeling to culpable excess. 
 The present rulers of India, coming from a dis- 
 tance of many thousand miles to govern a people 
 whose language, literature, manners, customs, and 
 ideas, are almost entirely new and strange to 
 them, cannot easily become so intimately ac- 
 quainted with their real circumstances as the 
 natives of the country are themselves. We should 
 therefore be guilty of a gross dereliction of duty 
 to ourselves, and afford our rulers just ground of 
 complaint at our apathy, did we omit on occasions 
 of importance like the present to supply them 
 
66 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 with such accurate information as might enable 
 them to devise and adopt measures calculated to 
 be beneficial to the country, and thus second by 
 our local knowledge and experience their decla- 
 red benevolent intentions for its improvements. 
 
 " The establishment of a new Sanskrit school in 
 Calcutta evinces the laudable desire of Govern- 
 ment to improve the natives of India by educa- 
 tion, a blessing for which they must ever be 
 grateful; and every well-wisher of the human race 
 must be desirous that the efforts made to promote 
 it should be guided by the most enlightened prin- 
 ciples, so that the stream of intelligence may flow 
 in the most useful channels. 
 
 " When this seminary of learning was proposed, 
 we understood that the government in England 
 had ordered a considerable sum of money to be 
 annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian 
 subjects. We were filled with sanguine hopes 
 that this sum would be laid out in employing 
 European gentlemen of talents and education to 
 instruct the natives of India in mathematics, natu- 
 ral philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other 
 useful sciences, which the nations of Europe have 
 carried to a degree of perfection that has raised 
 them above the inhabitants of other parts of the 
 world. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 67 
 
 " While we looked forward with pleasing hope to 
 the dawn of knowledge thus promised to the 
 rising generation, our hearts were filled with 
 mingled feelings of delight and gratitude; we 
 already offered up thanks to Providence for in- 
 spiring the most generous and enlightened na- 
 tions of the West with the glorious ambition of 
 planting in Asia the arts and sciences of modern 
 Europe. 
 
 " We find that the government are establishing 
 a Sanskrit school under Hindu pundits, to impart 
 such knowledge as is already current in India. 
 This seminary (similar in character to those 
 which existed in Europe before the time of Lord 
 Bacon) can only be expected to load the minds of 
 youth with grammatical niceties and metaphysical 
 distinctions of little or no practical use to the 
 possessors or to society. The pupils will there 
 acquire what was known two thousand years ago, 
 with the addition of vain and empty subtilties 
 since produced by speculative men, such as is 
 already commonly taught in all parts of India. 
 
 " The Sanskrit language, so difficult that 
 almost a lifetime is necessary for its acquisition, 
 is well known to have been for ages a lamentable 
 check on the diffusion of knowledge; and the 
 learning concealed under this almost impervious 
 
68 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 veil is far from sufficient to reward the labour of 
 acquiring it. But if it were thought necessary to 
 perpetuate this language for the sake of the por- 
 tion of valuable information it contains, this might 
 be much more easily accomplished by other means 
 than the establishment of a new Sanskrit college ; 
 for there have been always and are now numerous 
 professors of Sanskrit in the different parts of the 
 country engaged in teaching this language as well 
 as the other branches of literature which are to be 
 the object of the new seminary. Therefore their 
 more diligent cultivation, if desirable, would be 
 effectually promoted by holding out premiums 
 and granting certain allowances to their most 
 eminent professors, 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 sum 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 Lord- 
 ship'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 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 69 
 
 dozen of years of the most valuable period of their 
 lives in acquiring the niceties of Byakaran or 
 Sanskrit grammar. For instance, in learning to 
 discuss such points as the following : khad, signi- 
 fying to eat, khaduti, he or she or it eats ; query, 
 whether does khaduti, taken as a whole, convey the 
 meaning he, she, or it eats, or are separate parts 
 of this meaning conveyed by distinctions of the 
 word? 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 dis- 
 tinctly, or by them taken jointly ? 
 
 " Neither can much improvement arise from 
 such speculations as the following, which are the 
 themes suggested by the Vedant : in what man- 
 ner is the soul absorbed into the deity? what re- 
 lation 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 ex- 
 istence; that as father, brother, &c. have no actual 
 entity, they consequently deserve no real affec- 
 tion, and therefore the sooner we escape from 
 them and leave the world the better. Again, no 
 essential benefit can be derived by the student of 
 the Mimangsa from knowing what it is that 
 
70 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 makes the killer of a goat sinless on pronouncing 
 certain passages of the Vedant, and what is the 
 real nature and operative influence of passages of 
 the Vedas, &c. 
 
 " The student of the Nyayushastra cannot be 
 said to have improved his mind after he has 
 learned from it into how many ideal classes the 
 objects in the universe are divided, and what 
 speculative relation the soul bears to the body, 
 the body to the soul, the eye to the ear, &c. 
 
 " In order to enable your Lordship to appreciate 
 the utility of encouraging such imaginary learning 
 as above characterized, I beg your Lordship will 
 be pleased to compare the state of science and 
 literature in Europe before the time of Lord Bacon 
 with the progress of knowledge made since he 
 wrote. 
 
 " If it had been intended to keep the British 
 nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian 
 philosophy would not have been allowed to dis- 
 place the system of the schoolmen, which was tlu* 
 best calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the 
 same manner the Sanskrit system of education 
 would be the best calculated to keep this country 
 in darkness, if such had been the policy of the 
 British legislature. But as the improvement of 
 the native population is the object of the govern- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 71 
 
 ment, it will consequently promote a more liberal 
 and enlightened system of instruction ; embracing 
 mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, ana- 
 tomy, with other useful sciences, which may be 
 accomplished with the sum proposed by employing 
 a few gentlemen of talents and learning educated 
 in Europe, and providing a college furnished with 
 necessary books, instruments, and other apparatus. 
 " In representing this subject to your Lordship 
 I conceive myself discharging a solemn duty which 
 I owe to my countrymen, and also to that en- 
 lightened sovereign and legislature which have 
 extended their benevolent care to this distant 
 land, actuated by a desire to improve its inha- 
 bitants, and therefore humbly trust you will 
 excuse the liberty I have taken in thus expressing 
 my sentiments to your Lordship. 
 
 " I have the honour, &c. 
 (Signed) " RAM MOHUN ROY." 
 
 This memorial was handed over by Lord 
 Amherst to the education committee, and the fate 
 it met with may be conjectured from the spirit 
 which then animated that body. The memorial 
 remained unanswered, and the design of founding 
 a new Sanskrit college was carried into execution. 
 
 The opinion entertained on this subject by an 
 
72 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 Indian statesman of Sir Charles Metcalfe's estab- 
 lished character and long practical experience 
 cannot fail to be regarded with interest. He 
 considers Sanskrit and Arabic books as mere 
 "waste paper," as far as national education is 
 concerned. His words are, "The government 
 having resolved to discontinue, with some excep- 
 tions, the printing of the projected editions of 
 oriental works, a great portion of the limited educa- 
 tion fund having hitherto been expended on similar 
 publications to little purpose but to accumulate stores 
 of waste paper, cannot furnish pecuniary aid to the 
 society for the further printing of those works, 
 but will gladly make over the parts already 
 printed either to the Asiatic Society or to any 
 society or individuals who may be disposed to 
 complete the publication at their own expense." 
 The Asiatic Society had applied to the govern- 
 ment for funds to complete the printing of the 
 oriental works which had been discontinued by 
 the education committee, and this was the answer 
 which was returned. In another part of this paper, 
 Sir C. Metcalfe fully admits the valuable and laud- 
 able nature of the pursuits in which the Asiatic 
 Society was engaged, but he uses, as we have 
 seen, the most emphatic language to express his 
 sense of the unsuitableness of Arabic and Sanskrit 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 73 
 
 folios for the enlightenment of the people, and the 
 consequent impropriety of contributing towards 
 the printing of them out of the limited fund 
 which had been set apart for the purpose of 
 national education. 
 
 Both Sir Charles Metcalfe and Lord Auckland, 
 who have presided over the administration of India 
 since Lord William Bentinck's departure, have 
 given their full and cordial support to the educa- 
 tion committee in carrying into effect the plans of 
 the last-mentioned nobleman. It is not likely that 
 three such men should be mistaken on a point to 
 which, from its important bearing on Indian in- 
 terests, they must have given a large share of their 
 attention.* 
 
 The last authority to which I shall advert is 
 the highest that can be had recourse to on Indian 
 affairs. The Bengal government had reported 
 certain measures adopted by it for the reform of 
 the existing oriental colleges, and the establish- 
 ment of the new Sanskrit college at Calcutta, and 
 on the 18th February 1821 the court of directors, 
 
 * Among other proofs of the sincere interest which the present 
 Governor General takes in the subject, he has built at his own 
 expense a prettily designed schoolhouse in the park at Barrack- 
 poor ; and in this he has established a large English school, which 
 he often visits, to watch the improvement and direct the studies 
 of the pupils. 
 
 E 
 
74 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 with the sanction of the board of control, replied 
 
 as follows : 
 
 " The ends proposed in the institution of the 
 Paras. 230 to 238; Hindu* college, and the same 
 
 also letter. 10th March . ^ , ~ , ^ T 
 
 i82i, P aras.i53toi80. rna y be affirmed of the Mo- 
 State of the Madressa hammedan, were two : the first, 
 
 or Mohammedan col- 
 lege at Calcutta, and of to ma ke a favourable impres- 
 
 the Hindu college at 
 
 Benares, with measures sion, by our encouragement of 
 
 adopted for their im- . . 
 
 provement, and estab- their literature, upon the minds 
 
 !rai: ofthenatives ; and the second, 
 
 lieu of the proposed to promote useful learning. 
 
 Hindu college at Nud- 
 
 dea and Tirhoot. You acknowledge, that if the 
 
 plan has had any effect of the former kind, it has 
 had none of the latter; and you add, that * it 
 must be feared that the discredit attaching to 
 such a failure has gone far to destroy the influence 
 which the liberality of the endowments would 
 otherwise have had.' 
 
 " We have from time to time been assured, that 
 these colleges, though they had not till then been 
 useful, were, in consequence of proposed arrange- 
 ments, just about to become so; and we have 
 received from you a similar prediction on the pre- 
 sent occasion. 
 
 * The new Sanskrit college at Calcutta is meant, as is evident 
 from the context, and from the abstract in the margin of the 
 original dispatch. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 75 
 
 " We are by no means sanguine in our expec- 
 tation, that the slight reforms which you have 
 proposed to introduce will be followed by much 
 improvement; and we agree with you in certain 
 doubts, whether a greater degree of activity, even 
 if it were produced on the part of the masters, 
 would, in present circumstances, be attended with 
 the most desirable results. 
 
 " With respect to the sciences, it is worse than 
 a waste of time to employ persons either to teach 
 or to learn them in the state in which they are 
 found in the oriental books. As far as any his- 
 torical documents may be found in the oriental 
 languages, what is desirable is, that they should 
 be translated; and this, it is evident, will best be 
 accomplished by Europeans who have acquired 
 the requisite knowledge. Beyond these branches, 
 what remains in oriental literature is poetry; but 
 it never has been thought necessary to establish 
 colleges for the cultivation of poetry, nor is it cer- 
 tain that this would be the most effectual expedient 
 for the attainment of the end. 
 
 " In the meantime, we wish you to be fully 
 apprized of our zeal for the progress and improve- 
 ment of education among the natives of India, 
 and of our willingness to make considerable sacri- 
 fices to that important end, if proper means for 
 E 2 
 
7(5 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the attainment of it could be pointed out to us ; 
 but we apprehend that the plan of the institutions, 
 to the improvement of which our attention is now 
 directed, was originally and fundamentally erro- 
 neous. The great end should not have been to 
 teach Hindu learning or Mohammedan learning, 
 but useful learning. No doubt, in teaching useful 
 learning to the Hindus or Mohammedans, Hindu 
 media or Mohammedan media, as far as they were 
 found the most effectual, would have been proper 
 to be employed, and Hindu and Mohammedan 
 prejudices would have needed to be consulted, 
 while every thing which was useful in Hindu or 
 Mohammedan literature it would have been proper 
 to retain ; nor would there have been any insu- 
 perable difficulty in introducing, under these re- 
 servations, a system of instruction from which 
 great advantage might have been derived. In 
 professing, on the other hand, to establish semi- 
 naries for the purpose of teaching mere Hindu 
 or mere Mohammedan literature, you bound your- 
 selves to teach a great deal of what was frivolous, 
 not a little of what was purely mischievous, and a 
 small remainder, indeed, in which utility was in 
 any way concerned. 
 
 " We think that you have taken, upon the 
 whole, a rational view of what is best to be done. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 77 
 
 In the institutions which exist on a particular 
 footing alterations should not be introduced more 
 rapidly than a due regard to existing interests and 
 feelings will dictate; at the same time that in- 
 cessant endeavours should be used to supersede 
 what is useless or worse in the present course of 
 study by what your better knowledge will recom- 
 mend. 
 
 " In the new college which is to be instituted, 
 and which we think you have acted judiciously in 
 placing at Calcutta, instead of Nuddea and Tir- 
 hoot, as originally sanctioned, it will be much fur- 
 ther in your power, because not fettered by any 
 preceding practice, to consult the principle of 
 utility in the course of study which you may pre- 
 scribe. Trusting that the proper degree of atten- 
 tion will be given to this important object, we 
 desire that an account of the plan which you ap- 
 prove may be transmitted to us, and that an 
 opportunity of communicating to you our senti- 
 ments upon it may be given to us, before any 
 attempt to carry it into execution is made." 
 
 This dispatch was referred to the education 
 committee, who stated in reply, that in proposing 
 the improvement of men's minds it is first neces- 
 sary to secure their conviction that such improve- 
 ment is desirable ; that tuition in European science 
 JE 3 
 
78 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 was neither amongst the sensible wants of the 
 people, nor in the power of the government to 
 bestow * ; that the maulavee and pundit, satisfied 
 with their own learning, are little inquisitive as to 
 anything beyond it, and are not disposed to regard 
 the literature and science of the West as worth the 
 labour of attainment; and that any attempt to 
 enforce an acknowledgment of the superiority of 
 the intellectual productions of the West could 
 only create dissatisfaction. 
 
 This brings us to the second point which we had 
 to consider, namely, whether, supposing English 
 literature to be best adapted for the improvement 
 of the people of India, they are themselves ready 
 to profit by the advantages which it holds out. If 
 it can be proved that tuition in European science 
 has become one of the sensible wants of the people, 
 and that, so far from being satisfied with their own 
 learning, they display an eager avidity to avail 
 themselves of every opportunity of acquiring the 
 knowledge of the West, it must be admitted that the 
 case put by the committee of 1824 has occurred, 
 
 * This letter was dated on the 18th August 1824. The Hindu 
 college was established in 1816, by the voluntary subscription of 
 the natives themselves, for the purpose of instructing their youth 
 in European science, for which no provision had at that time been 
 made by the government. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 79 
 
 and that, according to their own rule, the time 
 has arrived when instruction in western literature 
 and science may be given on an extensive scale, 
 without any fear of producing a reaction. 
 
 The proofs that such is the actual state of things 
 have been already touched upon. As the principle 
 of the school book society is, to print only such books 
 as are in demand, and to dispose of them only to 
 those who pay for them, its operations furnish, 
 perhaps, the best test of the existing condition of 
 public feeling in regard to the different systems 
 of learning which are simultaneously cultivated in 
 India. It appears, from their last printed report, 
 that from January 1834 to December 1835 the 
 following sales were effected by them : 
 
 English books - 31,649 
 Anglo- Asiatic, or books partly 
 in English and partly in some 
 
 eastern language - - 4,525 
 
 Bengalee - 5,754 
 
 Hinduee - 4,171 
 
 Hindusthanee - 3,384 
 
 Persian - 1,454 
 
 Uriya 834 
 
 Arabic 36 
 
 Sanskrit - - 16 
 E 4 
 
80 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 Indeed, books in the learned native languages 
 are such a complete drug in the market, that the 
 school book society has for some time past ceased 
 to print them ; and that society, as well as the edu- 
 cation committee, has a considerable part of its 
 capital locked up in Sanskrit and Arabic lore, 
 which was accumulated during the period when 
 the oriental mania carried every thing before it. 
 Twenty-three thousand such volumes, most of 
 them folios and quartos, filled the library, or 
 rather the lumber room, of the education com- 
 mittee at the time when the printing was put a 
 stop to, and during the preceding three years their 
 sale had not yielded quite one thousand rupees. 
 
 At all the oriental colleges, besides being in- 
 structed gratuitously, the students had monthly 
 stipends allowed them, which were periodically 
 augmented till they quitted the institution. At 
 the English seminaries, not only was this expe- 
 dient for obtaining pupils quite superfluous, but 
 the native youth were ready themselves to pay for 
 the privilege of being admitted. The average 
 monthly collection on this account from the pupils 
 of the Hindu college for February and March 
 1836 was, sicca rupees, 1,325. Can there be more 
 conclusive evidence of the real state of the demand 
 than this ? The Hindu college is held under the 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 81 
 
 same roof as the new Sanskrit college s at which 
 thirty pupils were hired at 8 rupees each, and 
 seventy at 5 rupees, or 590 rupees a month in all. 
 The Hindu college was founded by the volun- 
 tary contributions of the natives themselves as 
 early as 1816. In 1831 the committee reported, 
 that " a taste for English had been widely dissemi- 
 nated, and independent schools conducted by 
 young men reared in the Vidyalaya (the Hindu 
 college) are springing up in every direction."* 
 This spirit, gathering strength from time and 
 from many favourable circumstances, had gained 
 a great height in 1835; several rich natives had 
 established English schools at their own expense ; 
 associations had been formed for the same pur- 
 pose at different places in the interior, similar to 
 the one to which the Hindu college owed its 
 origin. The young men who had finished their 
 education propagated a taste for our literature, 
 ana, partly as teachers of benevolent or pro- 
 prietary schools, partly as tutors in private fami- 
 lies, aided all classes in its acquirement. The 
 tide had set in strongly in favour of English 
 education, and when the committee declared 
 itself on the same side, the public support they 
 
 * The entire extract will be found at page 8. 
 E 5 
 
82 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 received rather went beyond, than fell short of 
 what was required. More applications were 
 received for the establishment of schools than 
 could be complied with ; there were more candi- 
 dates for admission to many of those which were 
 established than could be accommodated. On 
 the opening of the Hoogly college, in August 1836, 
 students of English flocked to it in such numbers 
 as to render the organization and classification 
 of them a matter of difficulty. Twelve hundred 
 names were entered on the books of this depart- 
 ment of the college within three days, and at the 
 end of the year there were upwards of one thou- 
 sand in regular attendance. The Arabic and 
 Persian classes of the institution at the same time 
 mustered less than two hundred. There appears 
 to be no limit to the number of scholars, except 
 that of the number of teachers whom the com- 
 mittee is able to provide. Notwithstanding the 
 extraordinary concourse of English students at 
 Hoogly, the demand was so little exhausted, that 
 when an auxiliary school was lately opened within 
 two miles of the college, the English department of it 
 was instantly filled, and numerous applicants were 
 sent away unsatisfied. In the same way, when 
 additional means of instruction were provided at 
 Dacca, the number of pupils rose at once from 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 83 
 
 150 to upwards of 300, and more teachers were 
 still called for. The same thing also took place 
 at Agra. These are not symptoms of a forced 
 and premature effort, which, as the committee 
 of 1824 justly observed, would have recoiled 
 upon ourselves, and have retarded our ultimate 
 success. ^ 
 
 To sum up what has been said: the Hindu 
 system of learning contains so much truth as to 
 have raised the nation to its present point of civi- 
 lization, and to have kept it there for ages without 
 retrogading, and so much error as to have pre- 
 vented it from making any sensible advance 
 during the same long period. Under this system, 
 history is made up of fables, in which the learned 
 in vain endeavour to trace the thread of authentic 
 narrative ; its medicine is quackery ; its geo- 
 graphy and astronomy are monstrous absurdity; 
 its law is composed of loose contradictory maxims, 
 and barbarous and ridiculous penal provisions; 
 its religion is idolatry; its morality is such as 
 might be expected from the example of the gods 
 and the precepts of the religion. Suttee, Thug- 
 gee, human sacrifices, Ghaut murder, religious 
 suicides, and other such excrescences of Hin- 
 duism, are either expressly enjoined by it, or are 
 directly deduced from the principles inculcated by 
 E 6 
 
84 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 it. This whole system of sacred and profane 
 learning is knitted and bound together by the 
 sanction of religion; every part of it is an article 
 of faith, and its science is as unchangeable as its 
 divinity. Learning is confined by it to the Brah- 
 mins, the high priests of the system, by whom 
 and for whom it was devised. All the other 
 classes are condemned to perpetual ignorance and 
 dependence; their appropriate occupations are 
 assigned by the laws of caste, and limits are fixed, 
 beyond which no personal merit or personal good 
 fortune can raise them. The peculiar wonder of 
 the Hindu system is, not that it contains so much 
 or so little true knowledge, but that it has been 
 so skilfully contrived for arresting the progress of 
 the human mind, as to exhibit it at the end of 
 two thousand years fixed at nearly the precise 
 point at which it was first moulded. The Mo- 
 hammedan system of learning is many degrees 
 better, and " resembles that which existed among 
 the nations of Europe before the invention of 
 printing ;" * so far does even this fall short of the 
 
 * These are the words in which Mr. Adam sums up his descrip- 
 tion of Mohammedan learning in India ; and the real state of the 
 case could not be more accurately described. Gibbon's sketch of 
 Moslem learning will be found in the 52d chapter of the Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire, under the heads, " Their real progress 
 in the sciences,*' and " Want of erudition, taste, and freedom." But 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 85 
 
 knowledge with which Europe is now blessed. 
 These are the systems under the influence of 
 which the people of India have become what they 
 are. They have been weighed in the balance, 
 and have been found wanting. To perpetuate 
 them, is to perpetuate the degradation and misery 
 of the people. Our dut^is not to teach, but to 
 unteach them, not to rivet the shackles which 
 have for ages bound down the minds of our sub- 
 jects, but to allow them to drop off by the lapse 
 of time and the progress of events. 
 
 If we turn from Sanskrit and Arabic learning, 
 and the state of society which has been formed by 
 it, to western learning, and the improved and still 
 rapidly improving condition of the western nations, 
 w r hat a different spectacle presents itself! Through 
 the medium of England, India has been brought 
 into the most intimate connection with this fa- 
 
 however defective Arabian learning may appear when viewed by 
 the light of modern science, it would be doing great injustice to 
 the Augustan age of the caliphs at Bagdad to compare it with the 
 present sera of Mohammedan literature in India. The Indian 
 Mohammedans are only bad imitators of an erroneous system. 
 Arabic is studied at Calcutta as a difficult foreign language ; 
 original genius and research have long since died out, if they 
 ever had any existence, among this class of literary people in 
 India ; and the astronomy of Ptolemy and the medicine of Galen 
 are languidly transmitted by the dogmatic teachers of one gene- 
 ration to the patient disciples of the next. 
 
86 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 voured quarter of the globe, and the particular 
 claims of the English language as an instrument 
 of Indian improvement have thus become a point 
 of paramount importance. These claims have 
 been thus described by one who will be admitted 
 to have made good his title to an opinion on the 
 subject : - 
 
 " How then stands the case? We have to edu- 
 cate a people who cannot at present be educated 
 by means of their mother tongue ; we must teach 
 them some foreign language. The claims of our 
 own language it is hardly necessary to recapi- 
 tulate; it stands pre-eminent even among the 
 languages of the West ; it abounds with works of 
 imagination not inferior to the noblest which 
 Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of 
 every species of eloquence; with historical com- 
 positions which, considered merely as narratives 
 have seldom been surpassed, and which, con- 
 sidered as vehicles of ethical and political in- 
 struction, have never been equalled; with just 
 and lively representations of human life and 
 human nature; with the most profound specu- 
 lations on metaphysics, morals, government, juris- 
 prudence, trade; with full and correct informa- 
 tion respecting every experimental science which 
 tends to preserve the health, to increase the com- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 87 
 
 fort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever 
 knows that language has ready access to all the 
 vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations 
 of the earth have created and hoarded in the 
 course of ninety generations. It may safely be 
 said that the literature now extant in that lan- 
 guage is of far greater value than all the litera- 
 ture which three hundred years ago was extant in 
 all the languages of the world together. Nor is / 
 this all : in India English is the language spoken 
 by the ruling class; it is spoken by the higher 
 class of natives at the seats of government; it is 
 likely to become the language of commerce 
 throughout the seas of the East; it is the lan- 
 guage of two great European communities which 
 are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other 
 in Austral -Asia, communities which are every 
 year becoming more important and more closely 
 connected with our Indian Empire. Whether we 
 look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at 
 the particular situation of this country, we shall 
 see the strongest reason to think that, of all 
 foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which 
 would be the most useful to our native subjects." 
 
 As of all existing languages and literatures the 
 English is the most replete with benefit to the 
 
88 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 human race, so it is overspreading the earth with 
 a rapidity far exceeding any other. With a partial 
 exception in Canada, English is the language of 
 the continent of America north of Mexico ; and 
 at the existing rate of increase there will be a 
 hundred millions of people speaking English in 
 the United States alone at the end of this century. 
 In the West India islands we have given our 
 language to a population collected from various 
 parts of Africa, and by this circumstance alone 
 they have been brought many centuries nearer to 
 civilization than their countrymen in Africa, who 
 may for ages grope about in the dark, destitute of 
 any means of acquiring true religion and science. 
 Their dialect is an uncouth perversion of English 
 suited to the present crude state of their ideas, 
 but their literature will be the literature of Eng- 
 land, and their language will gradually be conformed 
 to the same standard. More recently the English 
 language has taken root in the continent of Africa 
 itself, and a nation is being formed by means of 
 it in the extensive territory belonging to the Cape 
 out of a most curious mixture of different races. 
 But the scene of its greatest triumphs will be in 
 Asia. To the south a new continent is being 
 peopled with the English race ; to the north, an 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 89 
 
 ancient people, who have always taken the lead in 
 the progress of religion and science in the east,* 
 have adopted the English language as their lan- 
 guage of education, by means of which they are 
 becoming animated by a new spirit, and are en- 
 tering at once upon the improved knowledge of 
 Europe, the fruit of the labour and invention 
 of successive ages. The English language, not 
 many generations hence, will be spoken by millions 
 in all the four quarters of the globe ; and our 
 learning, our morals, our principles of constitu- 
 tional liberty, and our religion, embodied in the 
 established literature, and diffused through the 
 genius of the vernacular languages, will spread far 
 and wide among the nations. 
 
 The objection, therefore, to the early proceed- 
 ings of the education committee is, that they were 
 calculated to produce a revival, not of sound 
 learning, but of antiquated and pernicious errors. 
 
 * The Buddhist religion, which originated in Behar, has spread 
 to the furthest extremity of China, and the intervening nations 
 have always been accustomed to regard India as the fountain-head 
 both of learning and religion. Thibetan literature is a translation 
 from Sanskrit, and the vernacular language of Behar is the sacred 
 language of Burmah and the adjoining countries. It may be 
 hoped that India will hereafter become the centre of a purer 
 faith. The innumerable islands of the South must also be power- 
 fully acted upon by Austral- Asia, which has been wonderfully 
 reserved to be erected at once into a civilized and powerful eountry 
 in the darkest region of eastern barbarism. 
 
90 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 The pupils in the oriental seminaries were trained 
 in a complete course of Arabic and Sanskrit 
 learning, including the theology of the Vedas and 
 the Koran, and were turned out accomplished 
 inaulavees and pundits, the very class whom the 
 same committee described as " satisfied with their 
 own learning, little inquisitive as to any thing 
 beyond it, and not disposed to regard the litera- 
 ture and science of the West as worth the labour 
 of attainment." And having been thus educated, 
 they were sent to every part of the country to fill 
 the most important situations which were open to 
 the natives, the few who could not be provided 
 for in this way taking service as private tutors or 
 family priests. Every literary attempt connected 
 with the old learning at the same time received 
 the most liberal patronage, and the country was 
 deluged with Arabic and Sanskrit books. By 
 acting thus, the committee created the very evil 
 which they professed to fear. They established 
 great corporations, with ramifications in every dis- 
 trict, the feelings and interest of whose members 
 were deeply engaged on the side of the prevailing 
 errors. All the murmuring which has been heard 
 has come from this quarter; all the opposition 
 which has been experienced has been headed by 
 persons supported by our stipends, and trained in 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 91 
 
 our colleges. The money spent on the Arabic 
 and Sanskrit colleges was, therefore, not merely a 
 dead loss to the cause of truth ; it was bounty 
 money paid to raise up champions of error, and to 
 call into being an oriental interest which was 
 bound by the condition of its existence to stand 
 in the front of the battle against the progress of 
 European literature. 
 
 In the five districts named in the margin, one 
 of which contains the former Moham- Murshedabad, 
 
 Bheerbhoom, 
 
 medan capital of Bengal, Mr. Adam Burdwan, 
 found only 158 students of Arabic Tirhoot. 
 learning. In the single government college 
 of Calcutta there are 114 students. Although 
 supported and patronised by the British govern- 
 ment, this college differs in no respect from the 
 Mohammedan colleges at Constantinople and 
 Bokhara. It is as completely a seminary of 
 genuine unmitigated Mohammedanism as the 
 Jesuits' college at Rome is a seminary of Roman 
 Catholicism. It is considered by the Moslems as 
 the head quarters of their religion in Bengal, and 
 it has made Calcutta the radiating centre, not 
 of civilization, as it ought only to be, but, to a 
 lamentable extent, of bigotry and error. 
 
 The Sanskrit college was a still more desperate 
 
92 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 attempt to reproduce the feelings and habits of 
 thought of past ages in the midst of a compara- 
 tively enlightened community. By establishing 
 the Hindu college at their own expense, the 
 Hindus had seven years before given a decisive 
 proof that it was instruction in English and not 
 in Sanskrit which they required. But, in spite of 
 this evidence, the act with which we signalised the 
 commencement of our educational operations was 
 the establishment of a Brahminical college, in 
 which false science and false religion are sys- 
 tematically taught, in which the priestly domina- 
 tion and monopoly of learning are maintained 
 both by practice* and precept, and the members 
 of which, although they reside at the head quar- 
 ters of British Indian civilization, are always 
 present in spirit with the founders of the Hindu 
 system, with whom they daily converse, and to 
 whose age they really belong. Can we wonder 
 that the young men educated at such a seminary 
 are, according to their own confession, burdens to 
 the public, and objects of contempt to their coun- 
 trymen ? It might have succeeded if it had been 
 established a thousand years ago; but the ins tit u- 
 
 * None but Brahmins and a few persons of the medical caste 
 are admitted to study at this institution. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 93 
 
 tions of a barbarous age will not satisfy a people 
 whose eyes have been opened, and who are craving 
 after true knowledge. 
 
 After the committee had confessed that " a taste 
 for English had been widely disseminated, and 
 independent schools, conducted by young men 
 reared in the Hindu college, were springing up 
 in every direction *," it might have been expected 
 that they would have modified their plan of pro- 
 ceeding. It was admitted, that to give instruction 
 in European science was their ultimate object; it 
 also appears from their report that this was the 
 only part of their operations which was propa- 
 gating itself, and proceeding with an independent 
 spring of action; why, therefore, was scope not 
 given to it? 
 
 For some time after this, however, we continued 
 to prop up barbarism by the power of civilization, 
 and to avail ourselves of the enormous influence 
 of the English government to press on the people 
 decayed and noxious systems, which they them- 
 selves rejected. That we did not succeed in 
 giving to those systems a more effectual impulse 
 was not owing to any want of exertion on our 
 
 * See the whole extract at page 8. 
 
94 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 part. We pushed them as far or farther than 
 they would go, and it was only because the natives 
 would not buy the books printed by us, or read 
 them without being paid to do so, that a change 
 was at last resolved on. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 95 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 Objections answered. Construction of the Charter Act 
 of 1813. Change in the Employment of the public 
 Endowments for the Encouragement of Learning. 
 Abolition of Stipends. Probability of the Natives 
 being able to prosecute the Study of English with 
 effect. The alleged Necessity of cultivating Arabic 
 and Sanskrit for the sake of improving the vernacular 
 Languages. The Plan of employing Maulavees and 
 Pundits as our Agents for the Propagation of Eu- 
 ropean Science. Whether or not it is our Duty to 
 patronise the same Kind of Learning as our Prede- 
 cessors. 
 
 1 SHALL now proceed to reply, with as much 
 brevity as circumstances will admit, to the ob- 
 jections which have been urged to the change in 
 the committee's plan of operation made in accord- 
 ance with the resolution of the Indian govern- 
 ment, dated the 7th March 1835; and as my 
 object is not to write a book of my own, but to 
 put this important subject, once for all, in a clear 
 point of view, I shall continue to avail myself of 
 the writings of others whenever they express what 
 I have to say better than I could express it myself. 
 
96 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 The heads of objection will be taken from an 
 article by Professor Wilson, entitled " Education 
 of the Natives of India," published in the Asiatic 
 Journal for January 1836, which contains the most 
 complete statement which has yet appeared of all 
 that can be said on the oriental side of the 
 question. 
 
 The first in order relates to the construction of 
 that part of the charter act of 1813 by which a lac 
 of rupees a year was assigned for the education of 
 the natives of India. The opponents of our 
 present plan of proceeding contend that it was 
 not the intention of parliament, in making this 
 assignment, to encourage the cultivation of sound 
 learning and true principles of science, but to 
 bring about a revival of the antiquated and false 
 learning of the shasters, which had fallen into 
 neglect in consequence of the cessation of the 
 patronage which had in ancient times been ex- 
 tended to it by the native Hindu princes. To 
 this argument the following reply has been 
 made : 
 
 " It does not appear to me that the act of parlia- 
 ment can by any art of construction be made to 
 bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. 
 Jt contains nothing about the particular lan- 
 guages or sciences which are to be studied. A 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 97 
 
 sum is set apart ' for the revival and promotion 
 of literature, and the encouragement of the 
 learned natives of India, and for the introduction 
 and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences 
 among the inhabitants of the British territories.' 
 It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by 
 literature the parliament can have meant only 
 Arabic and Sanskrit literature; that they never 
 would have given the honourable appellation of a 
 < learned native' to a native who was familiar with 
 the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, 
 and the physics of Newton ; but that they meant 
 to designate by that name only such persons as 
 might have studied in the sacred books of the 
 Hindus all the uses of Cusa-grass, and all the 
 mysteries of absorption into the deity. This does 
 not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. 
 To take a parallel case : suppose that the pacha of 
 Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge to 
 the nations of Europe, but now sunk far below 
 them, were to appropriate a sum for the purpose 
 of ' reviving and promoting literature, and encou- 
 raging learned natives of Egypt,' would anybody 
 infer that he meant the youth of his pachalic to 
 give years to the study of hieroglyphics, to search 
 into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of 
 Osiris, and to ascertain with all possible accuracy 
 
98 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the ritual with which cats and onions were an- 
 ciently adored? Would he be justly charged with 
 inconsistency if, instead of employing his young 
 subjects in deciphering obelisks, he were to order 
 them to be instructed in the English and French 
 languages, and in all the sciences to which those 
 languages are the chief keys? 
 
 " The words on which the supporters of the old 
 system rely do not bear them out, and other words 
 follow which seem to be quite decisive on the 
 other side. This lac of rupees is set apart, not 
 only for c reviving literature in India,' the phrase 
 on which their whole interpretation is founded, 
 but also c for the introduction and promotion of a 
 knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants 
 of the British territories,' words which are alone 
 sufficient to authorize all the changes for which I 
 contend." 
 
 Both the court of directors and the Indian 
 government took this view of the subject at the 
 period when measures were first taken to carry 
 the intentions of the British parliament into 
 effect, and those intentions were certainly likely 
 to have been better understood at that time than at 
 any subsequent period. The Indian government 
 in their instructions to the committee appointed 
 to administer the funds made no allusion to the 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 99 
 
 supposed necessity for reviving oriental literature. 
 On the contrary, they stated the objects for which 
 the committee had been appointed to be " the 
 better instruction of the people, the introduction 
 of useful knowledge, including the arts and 
 sciences of Europe, and the improvement of their 
 moral character," objects with which the learning 
 of the shasters and the Koran, which it was 
 afterwards proposed to revive, are at complete 
 variance. The court of directors in their dis- 
 patch written about the same period are still 
 more explicit. They emphatically state that "it 
 is worse than a waste of time to employ persons 
 either to teach or to learn the sciences in the 
 state in which they are found in oriental books ;" 
 that " the great end should not have been to 
 teach Hindu learning or Mohammedan learning, 
 but useful learning;" and that, in establishing 
 seminaries for the purpose of teaching mere 
 Hindu or mere Mohammedan literature, the 
 Indian government bound themselves " to teach a 
 great deal of what was frivolous, not a little of 
 what was purely mischievous, and a small remain- 
 der indeed in which utility was in any way con^ 
 cerned." But meanwhile the administration of 
 the fund had fallen into the hands of persons 
 devoted to oriental studies, party zeal was excited, 
 F 2 
 
100 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 and the ingenuity of several able men was tasked 
 to the utmost to defend a course of proceeding 
 which had been adopted in spite of the declared 
 sentiments of the court of directors and of com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 It was urged, in the next place, that it was 
 downright spoliation to alter the appropriation of 
 any of the funds which had previously been spent 
 by the government in encouraging the study of 
 Sanskrit and Arabic, but which were now direc- 
 ted to be employed in teaching English under the 
 restrictions contained in the resolution of the 
 7th March 1835. To this it was replied that 
 " the grants which are made from the public 
 purse for the encouragement of literature differ in 
 no respect from the grants which are made from 
 the same purse for other objects of real or sup- 
 posed utility. We found a sanatarium on a spot 
 which we suppose to be healthy : do we thereby 
 pledge ourselves to keep a sanatarium there, if the 
 result should not answer our expectations ? Wi> 
 commence the erection of a pier : is it a violation 
 of the public faith to stop the work, if we after- 
 wards see reason to believe that the building will 
 be useless ? The rights of property are undoubt- 
 edly sacred; but nothing endangers those rights 
 so much as the practice, now unhappily too com- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 101 
 
 mon, of attributing them to things to which they 
 do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses 
 the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to 
 the institution of property the unpopularity and 
 the fragility of abuses. If the government has 
 given to any person a formal assurance, nay> if 
 the government has excited in any person's mind 
 a reasonable expectation, that he shall receiye a 
 certain income as a teacher or a learner of San- 
 skrit or Arabic, I would respect that person's pe- 
 cuniary interests. I would rather err on the side 
 of liberality to individuals than suffer the public 
 faith to be called in question. But to talk of a 
 government pledging itself to teach certain lan- 
 guages and certain sciences, though those lan- 
 guages may become useless, though those sciences 
 may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. 
 There is not a single word in any public instru- 
 ment from which it can be inferred that the 
 Indian government ever intended to give any 
 pledge on this subject, or ever considered the des- 
 tination of these funds as unalterably fixed. But, 
 had it been otherwise, I should have denied the 
 competence of our predecessors to bind us by any 
 pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a govern- 
 ment had in the last century enacted, in the most 
 solemn manner, that all its subjects should to the 
 F 3 
 
102 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 end of time be inoculated for the small-pox ; would 
 that goverment be bound to persist in the prac- 
 tice after Jenner's discovery? These promises, 
 of which nobody claims the performance, and from 
 which nobody can grant a release ; these vested 
 rights which vest in nobody ; this property with- 
 out proprietors ; this robbery which makes nobody 
 poorer, may be comprehended by persons of 
 higher faculties than mine. I consider this plea 
 merely as a set form of words, regularly used both 
 in England and in India in defence of every abuse 
 for which no other plea can be set up." All the pri- 
 vate endowments which have at different times been 
 placed under the management of the education 
 committee are administered with a strict regard 
 to the intentions of the founders. A large sum of 
 money, for instance, left by a late minister of the 
 king of Lucknow, which was originally appro- 
 priated to the use of the oriental college at Delhi, 
 continues to be applied to the support of oriental 
 literature in that institution. 
 
 Another objection which has been made is, that 
 the abolition of the stipends formerly given to 
 students will exclude the sons of learned men who 
 are in indigent circumstances, as well as those of 
 all persons living at a distance from the govern- 
 ment colleges, the advantages of which will thus 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 103 
 
 be confined to the capital and to one or two great 
 towns. 
 
 To this I answer, that, instead of two or three, 
 there are already forty institutions scattered 
 throughout the country; that the means of ob- 
 taining a liberal education have thus been brought 
 into everybody's own neighbourhood; and that 
 the number of young men belonging to every class 
 of society, and to every part of the Bengal pro- 
 vinces, who now profit by our seminaries, neces- 
 sarily greatly exceeds what used to be the case 
 under the plan of having a few expensive colleges 
 at which the students as well as teachers received 
 salaries. Hundreds of boys are now cultivating 
 our literature in Assam, Arrakan, Tenasserim, 
 and other frontier provinces, which did not send 
 a single student to the colleges at Calcutta and 
 Benares. 
 
 In India poverty is not the only obstacle to the 
 education of children at a distance from their 
 parents. The means of communication from place 
 to place are slow and inconvenient; a journey of 
 one or two hundred miles appears to a native the 
 same formidable undertaking that it did to our 
 ancestors in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and, 
 above all, the mutual confidence which leads Eng- 
 lishmen to trust the entire management of their 
 F 4 
 
104 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 children to persons whom they often know only 
 by reputation, is at a very low ebb in India. No 
 native who could afford to give his son an edu- 
 cation of any sort at home would think of sending 
 him to be brought up among strangers. It was 
 once proposed to educate the public wards at Cal- 
 cutta, where the government itself would have 
 had proper care taken of them, but the relations 
 of the wards so unanimously and decidedly ob- 
 jected to the plan that it was at once abandoned. 
 They had no objection, however, to their being 
 educated under the superintendence of the go- 
 vernment officers at their own provincial towns, 
 with which they are in almost daily communi- 
 cation, and at which the young men might have 
 resided, often in their own town houses, under 
 the care of the old servants of the family. Be- 
 sides this, the colleges under the stipendiary sys- 
 tem were regarded by all classes as charitable 
 institutions ; and this alone would have prevented 
 the native gentry from sending their sons to them. 
 They were filled with the children of indigent 
 persons, a very small proportion of whom came 
 from a distance ; and these last, even if they had 
 learned any thing worth communicating, which 
 they did not> would have been too few, too un in- 
 fluential, and too much isolated from the rest of 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 105 
 
 the community, to be able to induce the body of 
 their countrymen to participate in their opinions. 
 The animating and civilizing influence arising 
 from the neighbourhood of a large seminary, and 
 the daily intercourse of the people with its nu- 
 merous scholars, and the tendency which this has 
 to interest the public in the subject of education, 
 and to lead to the establishment of new institu- 
 tions, was too partial under the stipendiary system 
 to have any practical effect. Even if the education 
 given had been of a kind calculated to enlighten 
 the people, instead of confirming them in their 
 errors, it would have taken ages to make an im- 
 pression on the immense population of western 
 India by such means as these. 
 
 If any class of persons be favoured by the plan 
 which has now been adopted, it is those who are 
 able and willing to learn, and who are in a situ- 
 ation to induce others to follow their example. 
 If any be excluded, it is those who used to come 
 to obtain food, not for the mind, but for the body, 
 and who were too poor to be able to pursue their 
 studies in after life. So long as we offer instruc- 
 tion only, we may be sure that none but willing 
 students will attend; but if we offer money in 
 addition to instruction, it becomes impossible to 
 F 5 
 
106 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 say for the sake of which they attend. These 
 bounties on learning are the worst of bounties ; 
 they draw to a particular line a greater number 
 of persons than that line would, without artificial 
 encouragement, attract, or than the state of society 
 requires. They also paralyze exertion. A person 
 who does not want to learn a particular language 
 or science is tempted to commence the study by 
 the stipend; as soon as he has got the stipend 
 he has no motive for zealously prosecuting the 
 study. Sluggishness, mediocrity, absence of spi- 
 rited exertion, and resistance to all improvemen 
 are the natural growth of this system. 
 
 It is also of particular importance in such a 
 country as India, and on such a subject as popular 
 education, that the government should have some 
 certain test of the wishes of its subjects. As long 
 as stipends were allowed, students would of course 
 have been forthcoming. Now the people must 
 decide for themselves. Every facility is given, but 
 no bribes ; and if more avail themselves of one 
 kind of instruction than of another, we may be 
 sure that it is because such is the real bent of the 
 public mind. But for the abolition of stipends, 
 false systems might have been persevered in from 
 generation to generation, which, with an appear- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 107 
 
 ance of popularity, would really have been pre- 
 served from falling into disuse only by the patron- 
 age of government. 
 
 The result of the experiment has been most 
 satisfactory. Formerly we kept needy boys in 
 pay, to train them up to be bigoted maulavees 
 and pundits; now multitudes of the upper and 
 middle classes flock to our seminaries to learn, 
 without fee or reward, all that English literature 
 can teach them. The practice of giving stipends 
 to students was part of the general system by 
 which learning was confined to particular castes ; 
 this monopoly has now been broken down, and 
 all are invited to attend who are really anxious to 
 learn. Where formerly we paid both teachers 
 and students, we now only pay the teachers ; and 
 our means of extending our operations have been 
 proportionably increased ; yet, so great is the de- 
 mand for teachers, that if we could only increase 
 their number at will, we might have almost any 
 number of students. 
 
 It is constantly urged by the advocates of 
 oriental learning that the result of all our efforts 
 will only be to extend a smattering of English 
 throughout India, and that the question is be- 
 tween a profound knowledge of Sanskrit and 
 Arabic literature on the one side, and a super- 
 F 6 
 
108 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 ficial knowledge of the rudiments of English on 
 the other. 
 
 Nothing can be more groundless than this 
 assumption. The medical pupils who were de- 
 clared by Mr. Prinsep to have passed as good an 
 examination for the time they had attended lec- 
 tures as any class of pupils in Europe, acquired 
 their knowledge entirely from English books 
 and lectures delivered in English. Neither were 
 these picked boys; they principally came from 
 Mr/ Hare's preparatory school, and from the second 
 and third classes of the Hindu college, and they 
 were therefore below the standard of those who 
 go through the whole course of instruction at our 
 principal seminaries. 
 
 In their report published in 1831 the com- 
 mittee ? speaking of the Hindu college, observe : 
 "The consequence has surpassed expectation; a 
 command of the English language and a famili- 
 arity with its literature and science have been 
 acquired to an extent rarely equalled by any 
 schools in Europe." H Such having been the re- 
 sult at the Hindu college, what is there to pre- 
 vent our being equally successful in the more 
 recently established seminaries ? The same class 
 
 * The whole extract will be found at page 8. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 109 
 
 of youth have to be instructed; the same desire 
 exists on the part of the committee to give them 
 a really good education ; we have the same means 
 at our disposal for accomplishing that object. A 
 single show institution at the capital, to be always 
 exhibited and appealed to as a proof of their zeal 
 in the cause of liberal education, might answer very 
 well, as far as the committee themselves are con- 
 cerned; but what are the people of the interior to 
 do, to whom this education would be equally use- 
 ful, and who are equally capable of profiting by 
 it? For their sake the committee have now 
 established many Hindu colleges. 
 
 English is a much easier language than either 
 Arabic or Sanskrit. " The study of Sanskrit 
 grammar," Mr. Adam observes, " occupies about 
 seven years, lexicology about two, literature about 
 ten, law about ten, logic about thirteen, and my- 
 thology about four." The course of study fixed 
 for the Sanskrit college at Calcutta by Professor 
 Wilson embraces twelve years, the first six of 
 which are spent in learning grammar and compo- 
 sition; besides which, the boys are expected to 
 know something of grammar before they are ad- 
 mitted. In three years boys of ordinary abilities 
 get such a command of the English language as 
 
110 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 to be able to acquire every sort of information by 
 means of it. The Sanskrit is altogether a dead 
 language. The Arabic is not spoken in India. 
 The English is both a living and a spoken lan- 
 guage.* The Brahminical and Moslem systems 
 belong to bygone days ; a large portion of them 
 has become obsolete; a still larger is only faintly 
 reflected in the habits of the people. The asso- 
 ciations connected with the new learning, on the 
 other hand, are gaining ground every day. The 
 English government is established; English prin- 
 ciples and institutions are becoming familiarized 
 to the native mind ; English words are extensively 
 adopted into the native languages; teachers, books, 
 and schools are rapidly multiplied; the improve- 
 ments in the art of education, the result of the 
 extraordinary degree of attention which the subject 
 has received of late years in England, are all applied 
 to facilitate the study of English in India. In- 
 fant schools, which have lately been introduced, 
 will enable native children to acquire our lan- 
 guage, without any loss of time, as they learn to 
 speak. Nine years ago, when the first English 
 
 * The familiar use of a living language is an advantage which 
 the teachers of Latin and Greek, as well as those of Sanskrit and 
 Arabic, might envy. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. Ill 
 
 class was established in the upper provinces*, a 
 few old fashioned English spelling books were with 
 difficulty procured from the neighbouring stations. 
 Nine years hence it is probable that an English 
 education will be every where more cheaply and 
 easily obtained than an Arabic or Sanskrit one. 
 It is an error to anticipate the march of events, 
 but it is not less so to neglect to watch their pro- 
 gress, and to be perpetually judging the existing 
 state of things by a standard which is applicable 
 only to past times. " This, too, will acquire the 
 authority of time ; and what we now defend by pre- 
 cedents will itself be reckoned among precedents." 
 - Native children seem to have their faculties 
 developed sooner, and to be quicker and more 
 self-possessed than English children. Even when 
 the language of instruction is English, the English 
 have no advantage over their native class-fellows. 
 As far as capability of acquiring knowledge is 
 concerned, the native mind leaves nothing to be 
 desired. The faculty of learning languages is 
 particularly powerful in it. It is unusual to find, 
 even in the literary circles of the Continent, 
 foreigners who can express themselves in English 
 with so much fluency and correctness as we find 
 in hundreds of the rising generation of Hindus. 
 
 * At Delhi. 
 
112 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 Readiness in acquiring languages, which exists in 
 such a strong degree in children, seems to exist 
 also in nations which are still rising to manhood. 
 No people speak foreign languages like the Russians 
 and Hindus. Such nations are going through a 
 course of imitation, and those qualities of mind 
 upon which their success depends seem to be pro- 
 portionately developed. 
 
 When we go beyond this point to the higher 
 and more original powers of the mind, judgment, 
 reflection, and invention, it is not so easy to pro- 
 nounce an opinion. It has been said, that native 
 youth fall behind at the age at which these fa- 
 culties begin most to develope themselves in Eng- 
 lishmen. But this is the age when the young 
 Englishman generally commences another and 
 far more valuable education, consisting in the pre- 
 paration for, and practice of some profession re- 
 quiring severe application of mind; when he has 
 the highest honours and emoluments opened to 
 his view as the reward of his exertions, and when 
 he begins to profit by his daily intercourse with a 
 cultivated intellectual, and moral society. In- 
 stead of this, the native youth falls back on the 
 ignorant and depraved mass of his countrymen ; 
 and, till lately, so far from being stimulated to 
 further efforts, he was obliged to ask himself for 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 113 
 
 what end he had hitherto laboured. Every avenue 
 to distinction was shut against him; and his acquire- 
 ments served only to manifest the full extent of his 
 degraded position. The best test of what they 
 can do, is what they have done. Their ponderous 
 and elaborate grammatical systems, their wonder- 
 fully subtle metaphysical disquisitions, show them 
 to have a German perseverance and Greek acute- 
 ness ; and they certainly have not failed in poetical 
 composition. What may we not expect from these 
 powers of mind, invigorated by the cultivation of 
 true science, and directed towards worthy objects ! 
 The English, like the Hindus, once wasted their 
 strength on the recondite parts of school learning. 
 All that we can say with certainty is, that the 
 Hindus are excellent students, and have learned 
 well up to the point to which their instructors 
 have as yet conducted them. A new career is now 
 opened to them : the stores of European know- 
 ledge have been placed at their disposal : a cul- 
 tivated society of their own is growing up : their 
 activity is stimulated by the prospect of honourable 
 and lucrative employment. It will be seen what 
 the next fifty years will bring forth. 
 
 To return to the point from which I have di- 
 gressed ; it is true, that a smattering of English 
 formerly prevailed to a considerable extent, without 
 
114 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 any beneficial result ; and that English acquire- 
 ments were held in great contempt. The go- 
 vernment then encouraged nothing but Oriental 
 learning; and English, instead of being culti- 
 vated as a literary and scientific language, was 
 abandoned to menial servants and dependents, who 
 hoped by means of it to make a profit of the ig- 
 norance of their masters. It was first rescued from 
 this state of degradation by Lord William Bentinck 
 who made it the language of diplomatic correspond- 
 ence. * It was afterwards publicly recognised as 
 the most convenient channel, through which the 
 upper and middle classes of the natives could ob- 
 tain access to the knowledge of the West; and 
 many very good seminaries were established, to 
 enable them to acquire it. The prejudice against 
 English has now disappeared, and to know it, has 
 become a distinction to which people of all classes 
 aspire. There can be no doubt therefore of our now 
 being able to make a deep and permanent impres- 
 sion on the Hindu nation through this medium, 
 if sufficient means of instruction are provided. 
 
 Another argument urged for teaching Arabic and 
 Sanskrit is, that they are absolutely necessary for 
 
 * Translations are sent, with the Governor- General's letters, to 
 the native princes, when there is any doubt as to their being un- 
 derstood. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 115 
 
 the improvement of the vernacular dialects. The 
 latter, it is said, are utterly incapable of represent- 
 ing European ideas ; and the natives must therefore 
 have recourse to the congenial, accessible, and in- 
 exhaustible stores of their classical languages. To 
 adopt English phraseology would be grotesque 
 patchwork ; and the condemnation of the classical 
 languages to oblivion, would consign the dialects 
 to utter helplessness and irretrievable barbarism. 
 
 The experience both of the East and West de- 
 monstrates, that the difficulty which this argument 
 supposes never can exist. If the national lan- 
 guage can easily express any new idea which is 
 introduced from abroad, a native term is usually 
 adopted. But, if not, the word, as well as the 
 meaning, are imported together from the same 
 fountain of supply. This is the ordinary process ; 
 but the supply of words is not always limited to 
 the strict measure of our wants. Languages are 
 amplified and refined by scholars, who naturally 
 introduce the foreign words with which their minds 
 are charged, and which, from their being in the 
 habit of using them, appear to them to be more 
 expressive than any other. Hence that wealth 
 of words, that choice of verbal signs, some of do- 
 mestic and others of foreign origin ; some borrowed 
 from cognate, and others from radically different 
 
116 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 sources, which characterises the languages of the 
 modern civilised nations. The naturalisation of 
 foreign knowledge is, no doubt, a task of some 
 difficulty; but history proves that as fast as it can 
 be introduced, words are found in more than suf- 
 ficient abundance to explain it to the people, with- 
 out any special provision being necessary for that 
 purpose. The greater effort involves the less ; and 
 this is the first time any body ever thought of se- 
 parating them. 
 
 Take our own language as an example. Saxon 
 is the ground- work of it ; Norman- French was first 
 largely infused into it : then Latin and Greek, 
 on the revival of letters; and, last of all, a few 
 words from other modern languages. Each of these 
 has blended harmoniously with the rest ; and the 
 whole together has become one of the most powerful, 
 precise, and copious languages in the world. Yet 
 Latin, and Greek, and French are only very dis- 
 tantly related to the Saxon. It is curious that our 
 own language, which we know to be so consistent 
 arid harmonious, had formerly the same reproach 
 of incongruity cast on it. Klopstock called it an 
 ignoble and barbarous mixture of jarring mate- 
 rials ; to which Schlegel justly replied, that al- 
 though English is compounded of different lan- 
 guages, they have been completely fused into one 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 117 
 
 and that no Englishman ordinarily thinks of the 
 pedigree of the words which he uses, or is in the 
 least offended by the difference in their origin. 
 The same may be said, more or less, of all the 
 modern European languages. If Bengalee and 
 Hindusthanee ever become as well fitted for every 
 purpose of literature and science as English and 
 French, no person will have reason to complain of 
 the process by which this may have been effected. 
 A similar process has been gone through in 
 India. Sanskrit itself was engrafted by a race of 
 conquerors on the national languages, and very evi- 
 dent traces of its incongruity with them exist in the 
 south of India*, and in various hilly tracts. The 
 Mahommedan invaders afterwards introduced a 
 profusion of Arabic and Persian, and a few Turk- 
 ish words. The Portuguese contributed the naval 
 vocabulary and many other words, which are now 
 so blended with the vernacular dialects as not to be 
 distinguishable by the natives from words of ancient 
 Indian origin. And, lastly, numerous English 
 words have been already naturalised, and others 
 are daily becoming so through the medium of our 
 civil and military systems, of our national customs 
 
 * The languages of the Peninsula, south of the districts in 
 which Mahratta is commonly spoken, derive more than half their 
 words from sources entirely independent of the Sanskrit. 
 
118 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 and institutions, and, above all, of our literature 
 and science, which are now extensively cultivated 
 by the rising generation. Of these auxiliary lan- 
 guages, the ancient unadulterated Persian is closely 
 allied to the Sanskrit ; but Arabic, with which Per- 
 sian has been completely saturated since the con- 
 quest of Persia by the Arabians*, is as unlike 
 Sanskrit as it is possible for one language to be 
 unlike another. The Sanskrit delights in com- 
 pounds : the Arabic abhors the composition of 
 words, and expresses complex ideas by circumlo- 
 cution. The Sanskrit verbal roots are almost uni- 
 versally biliteral : the Arabic roots are as univer- 
 sally triliteral. They have scarcely a single word 
 in common. They are written in opposite direc- 
 tions ; Sanskrit, from left to right ; Arabic, from 
 right to left. " In whatever light we view them," 
 observes Sir William Jones, " they seem totally 
 distinct ; and must have been invented by two 
 different races of men." Portuguese and English, 
 on the other hand, through their close connection 
 
 + * Arabic has been extensively introduced into the Indian ver- 
 nacular languages, both mediately through Persian and imme- 
 diately from Arabic literature. The complete union of the Arabic 
 with the ancient Persian language, is as much a proof that the most 
 uncongenial languages will readily amalgamate as its union with 
 the Indian dialects. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 119 
 
 with Latin and Greek, have a great deal in com- 
 mon with Sanskrit. 
 
 In the face of these facts it is gravely asserted to 
 be "indispensably necessary"* to cultivate congenial 
 classical languages, in order to enrich and embellish 
 the popular Indian dialects. Then, with a strange 
 inconsistency, it is proposed to cultivate, for this 
 purpose, as being a congenial language, the Arabic, 
 which is the most radically different from the In- 
 dian dialects of any language that could be named ; 
 and, lastly, the English language, which has a 
 distant affinity to those dialects, through the Saxon, 
 and a very near connection with them through 
 the Latin and Greek, is rejected as uncongenial. 
 
 When we once go beyond the limits of the po- 
 pular vocabulary, Sanskrit, Arabic, and English 
 are equally new to the people. They have a word 
 to learn which they did not know before; and it is 
 
 * If the supposed necessity really existed, our language must have 
 been first improved by the cultivation of Anglo-Saxon philology, 
 instead of Norman- French ; the fathers of English literature 
 must have coined words from the Teutonic dialects, to express the 
 thoughts of the Greek, Roman, and Italian authors; our vocabu- 
 laries of war, cookery, and dress-making, instead of being unaltered 
 French, must first have been filtered through a German medium ; 
 and in India, every idea which has been adopted from the religion, 
 the learning, and the jurisprudence of the Arabians, must have 
 been translated into good Sanskrit before it could have been na- 
 turalised. 
 
120 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 as easy for them to learn an English as a Sanskrit 
 word. Numerous Arabic, English, and Portu- 
 guese terms have thus become household words in 
 India, the Sanskrit synonymes of which are utterly 
 unknown to the people. The first form part and 
 parcel of the popular language : the last have no 
 existence beyond the Shasters and the memories 
 of a few hundred Pundits who are conversant 
 with those old records. A gentleman, holding of- 
 fice in Indiaj lately attempted to reduce to practice 
 the theory now under consideration. In his offi- 
 cial communications to the neighbouring courts, 
 every word not of Sanskrit origin was carefully 
 expunged, and a pure Sanskrit word was substi- 
 tuted for it. Thus Sunyrahuk was thrust in the 
 place of Collector, Sunkhuk of Number, Adhesh of 
 Hukm, Dhoomadhikaree of Zemeendar ; and so on. 
 The consequence was, that his communications 
 were unintelligible to the persons to whom they 
 were addressed ; and it would have been better if 
 they had been in Persian, from which we had at that 
 time just escaped, than in such a learned jargon. 
 
 As it is therefore a matter of indifference from 
 what source the vocabulary is derived, while it is 
 admitted that English must be cultivated for the 
 sake of the knowledge which it contains, will it not 
 be advisable to make English serve both these 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 12 L 
 
 purposes ; to draw upon it for words as well as 
 ideas; to concentrate the national energies on this 
 single point? Otherwise it will be necessary for 
 the same persons to make themselves good Eng- 
 lish scholars, in order that they may learn che- 
 mistry, geology, or mechanics; and good Sanskrit 
 scholars, in order that they may get names to ap- 
 ply to what they have learned. Our main object 
 is, to raise up a class of persons who will make the 
 learning of Europe intelligible to the people of 
 Asia in their own languages. An enlarged and 
 accurate knowledge of the systems they will have 
 to explain, such as can be derived only from a long 
 course of study, will, at any rate, be necessary to 
 qualify them for this important task. But, if they 
 will then have to begin again, and to devote nine 
 years more to the study of Sanskrit philology, we 
 might as well at once abandon the attempt. Neither 
 would it be possible for one set of persons to pro- 
 vide learning, and another words ; and for every 
 lecturer or writer on European subjects always 
 to have his philologer at his elbow, to supply him 
 with Sanskrit terms as they are required. Until 
 the duration of human life is doubled, and means 
 are found to maintain the literary class through 
 twice the longest period now allotted to education, 
 such complicated and cumbrous schemes of na~ 
 
122 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 tional improvement will be impracticable : and 
 even if they were practicable, they would be 
 useless. When the people have to learn a new 
 word, it is of no consequence whether they learn at 
 Sanskrit or an English one; and all the time spent 
 in learning Sanskrit would therefore be downright 
 waste. 
 
 After a language has once assumed a fixed cha- 
 racter, the unnecessary introduction of new words 
 is, no doubt, offensive to good taste. But in Ben- 
 galee and Hindusthanee nothing is fixed ; every 
 thing is yet to be done, and a new literature has 
 to be formed, almost from the very foundation. 
 The established associations, which are liable to 
 be outraged by the obtrusion of strange words, 
 have therefore no existence in this case. Such 
 refinement is the last stage in the progress of 
 improvement. It is the very luxury of lan- 
 guage; and to speak of the delicate sensibility 
 of a Bengalee or Hindusthanee being offended 
 by the introduction of new words to express new 
 ideas, is to transfer to a poor and unformed tongue 
 the feelings which are connected only with a 
 rich and cultivated one. It will be time enough 
 after their scientific vocabulary is settled, and they 
 have masterpieces of their own, to think of keeping 
 their language pure. When they have a native 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 123 
 
 Milton or Shakspeare, they will not require us to 
 guide them in this respect. 
 
 All we have to do is to impregnate the national 
 mind with knowledge. The first depositaries of 
 this knowledge will have a strong personal in- 
 terest in making themselves intelligible. They will 
 speak to, and write for, their countrymen, with 
 whose habits of mind and extent of information 
 they will be far better acquainted than it is pos- 
 sible for us to be. They will be able to meet each 
 case as it arises far more effectually than it can be 
 done by laying down general rules before-hand. 
 Those who write for the educated classes will 
 
 V 
 
 freely avail themselves of English scientific terms. 
 Those who write for the people will seek out popu- 
 lar explanations of many of those terms at a 
 sacrifice of precision and accuracy. By degrees, 
 some will drop out of use, while others will retain 
 their place in the national language. Our own 
 language went through this process. After a pro- 
 fuse and often pedantic use of Latin and Greek 
 words by our earlier writers, our vocabulary 
 settled down nearly in its present form, being com- 
 posed of words partly of indigenous, and partly of 
 foreign, origin, to which occasional additions are 
 still made, as they are required, from both sources. 
 The only safe general rule which can be laid down 
 G 2 
 
124 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 on this subject, is to use the word which happens 
 at the time to be the most intelligible, from what- 
 ever language it may be derived, and to leave it to 
 be determined by experience whether that or some 
 other ought to be finally adopted. 
 
 If English is to be the language of education in 
 India, it follows, as a matter of course, that it will 
 be the scientific language also, and that terms will 
 be borrowed from it to express those ideas for which 
 no appropriate symbols exist in the popular dia- 
 lects. The educated class, through whom Euro- 
 pean knowledge will reach the people, will be 
 familiar with English. They will adopt the En- 
 glish words with which they are already ac- 
 quainted, and will be clear gainers by it, while 
 others will not be losers. The introduction of 
 English words into the vernacular dialects will 
 gradually diminish the distance between the sci- 
 entific and popular language. It will become 
 easier for the unlearned to acquire English, and 
 for the learned to cultivate and improve the ver- 
 nacular dialects. The languages of India will be 
 assimilated to the languages of Europe, as far as 
 the arts and sciences and general literature are 
 concerned; and mutual intercourse and the in- 
 troduction of further improvements will thus be 
 facilitated. And, above all, the vernacular dia- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 125 
 
 lects of India will, by the same process, be united 
 among themselves. This diversity of language is 
 one of the greatest existing obstacles to improve- 
 ment in India. But when English shall every 
 where be established as the language of education, 
 when the vernacular literature shall every where 
 be formed from materials drawn from this source, 
 and according to models furnished by this proto- 
 type, a strong tendency to assimilation will be cre- 
 ated. Both the matter and the manner will be 
 the same. Saturated from the same source, recast 
 in the same mould, with a common science, a com- 
 mon standard of taste, a common nomenclature, 
 the national languages, as well as the national cha- 
 racter, will be consolidated ; the scientific and lite- 
 rary acquisitions of each portion of the community 
 will be at once thrown into a common stock for the 
 general good ; and we shall leave an united and en- 
 lightened nation, where we found a people broken up 
 into sections, distracted by the system of caste, even 
 in the bosom of each separate society, and depressed 
 by literary systems, devised much more with a view 
 to check the progress, than to promote the advance, 
 of the human mind. No particular effort is required 
 to bring about these results. They will take place 
 in the natural course of things by the extension of 
 English education, just as the inhabitants of the 
 G 3 
 
126 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 greater part of Europe were melted down into one 
 people by the prevalence of the Roman language 
 and arts. All that is required is, that we should 
 not laboriously interpose an obstacle to the pro- 
 gress of this desirable change by the forced cul- 
 tivation of the Sanskrit and Arabic languages. 
 
 The argument we have been considering is the 
 last hold of the oriental party. Forced to admit 
 that Sanskrit and Arabic are not worth teaching 
 for the knowledge they contain, they would obtain 
 a reprieve for them on the ground that their voca- 
 bularies are required to patch up the vernacular 
 dialects for the reception of Western know- 
 ledge. Discarded as masters, they are to be re- 
 tained as servants to another and a better system. 
 Their spirit has fled, but their carcase must be 
 preserved to supply the supposed deficiencies, and 
 to impair the real energies, of the system which is 
 growing up in their place. 
 
 But, specious as the argument is, I should not 
 have dwelt on it so long, if it had not been closely 
 connected with a most pernicious error. The time 
 of the people of India has hitherto been wasted in 
 learning languages as distinguished from know- 
 ledge mere words as distinguished from things 
 to an extent almost inconceivable to Europeans. 
 This has been in a great measure unavoidable. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 127 
 
 The Mahommedan legal system was locked up in 
 Arabic; the Hindu in Sanskrit; Persian was 
 the language of official proceedings ; English that 
 of liberal education and of a great part of our 
 judicial and revenue system all of these being 
 independent of the common colloquial languages. 
 If, therefore, a person learned only one foreign or 
 dead language, it was impossible for him to qualify 
 himself to take an efficient part in public business. 
 If he learned several, his best years were wasted 
 in the unprofitable task of studying grammar and 
 committing vocabularies to memory. Persons 
 were considered learned in proportion to the 
 number of languages they knew ; and men, empty 
 of true knowledge and genius, acquired great 
 reputations, merely because they were full of 
 words. As great a waste of human time and la- 
 bour took place in India under this state of things, 
 as is caused in China by their peculiar system of 
 writing. In one country, life was exhausted in 
 learning the signs of words, and in the other in 
 learning words themselves. 
 
 At first we gave decided encouragement to this 
 false direction of the national taste. Our own at- 
 tention was turned the same way. Oriental philo- 
 logy had taken the place of almost every other 
 pursuit among our Indian literary men. The sur- 
 G 4 
 
128 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 prising copiousness, the complicated mechanism 
 of the Sanskrit and Arabic languages were 
 spoken of as if languages were an end to be at- 
 tained, instead of a means for attaining an end, 
 and were deserving of being studied by all sorts 
 of people without any reference to the amount 
 or kind of knowledge which they contain. All the 
 concurrent systems were liberally patronised by 
 the government, and the praises and emoluments 
 lavished on great Arabic and Sanskrit scholars, 
 were shared by natives as well as Europeans. 
 
 By degrees, however, a more wholesome state 
 of things began to prevail. The government 
 ceased to give indiscriminate support to every lite- 
 rary system, without reference to its real merits. 
 Persian is ceasing to be the language of business. 
 The study of Arabic and Sanskrit will soon be ren- 
 dered superfluous by the inestimable boon which is 
 being prepared for the people, of a complete body 
 of law in their own language. By these changes 
 an incalculable saving of human labour will be 
 effected. The best literary, scientific, and profes- 
 sional education will be obtained at the expense of 
 learning a single foreign language : and the years 
 which were before painfully spent in breaking the 
 shell of knowledge, will be employed in devouring 
 the kernel. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 129 
 
 But if it be really true that the cultivation of 
 the ancient classical languages is necessary to 
 qualify the popular dialects for the reception 
 of European knowledge, the progress of this 
 salutary change must be arrested in the midst ; 
 the intellect of the country must be rechained to 
 the heavy burden which has, for so many ages, 
 prevented it from standing upright ; and a pur- 
 suit which absorbs the time of the literary class, to 
 the exclusion of those studies which can alone 
 enable them to regenerate their country, must be 
 indefinitely persevered in. - It is true that neither 
 the law, nor the administration of it, nor the 
 established system of public instruction, any longer 
 require this enormous sacrifice. But the phi- 
 lological system lately propounded by the advo- 
 cates of Oriental education does require it. Such 
 is the expense at which this theory is to be main- 
 tained. If crores, instead of lacs of rupees, had 
 been spent in founding Sanskrit colleges and print- 
 ing Sanskrit books, it would have been as nothing 
 compared with this. The mental and moral en- 
 ergies of India are to be kept for ages in a state of 
 worse than Egyptian bondage, in order that the 
 vernacular dialects may be improved from con- 
 genial, instead of from uncongenial, sources. The 
 ordinary terms on which the God of wisdom has 
 G 5 
 
130 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 accorded knowledge to his creatures are thought 
 too easy; and new and hitherto unheard-of condi- 
 tions * are to be imposed, of such a nature as must 
 effectually prevent the monopoly of learning, 
 hitherto maintained in the East, from being broken 
 in upon by the rapid diffusion of English educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Another argument used by the Oriental party 
 is, that little real progress can be made until the 
 learned classes in India are enlisted in the cause 
 of diffusing sound knowledge, and that " one able 
 Pundit or Maulavee, who should add English to 
 Sanskrit or Arabic, who should be led to expose 
 the absurdities and errors of his own systems, and 
 advocate the adoption of European knowledge and 
 principles, would work a greater revolution in the 
 minds of his unlettered countrymen than would 
 result from their proficiency in English alone." 
 
 * The natives themselves have no idea of this alleged depend- 
 ence of the vernacular languages upon the Sanskrit. Mr. Adam 
 observes, at page 77 of his last report, " There is no connection be- 
 tween the Bengalee and Sanskrit schools of Bengal, or between 
 the Hindee and Sanskrit schools of Behar : the teachers, scholars, 
 and instruction of the common schools are totally different from 
 those of the schools of learning, the teachers and scholars being 
 drawn from different classes of society, and the instruction directed 
 to different objects. But this remark does not apply to the 
 Persian and Arabic schools, which are intimately connected, and 
 which almost inperceptibly pass into each other ; " and to the 
 same effect at greater length at page 59. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 131 
 
 The first objection to this plan of reform is, 
 that it is impracticable. An able Pundit or Mau- 
 lavee can be formed only by a long course of in- 
 struction, extending far into the years of manhood. 
 It is then too late to begin a new training in Eu- 
 ropean literature and science, and even if it were not 
 too late, they would have no inclination for the task. 
 Their interest, their affections, their prejudices, 
 their pride, their religious feelings are all pre-en- 
 gaged in behalf of the systems under the influence 
 of which they have grown up, and by which their 
 minds have been formed. Their time of change 
 is in every respect gone by. Although the system 
 of education advocated by the oriental party had 
 a fair trial of upwards of ten years, no teacher of 
 this description was produced, nor was there ever 
 any appearance of one. A few Maulavees and 
 Pundits may, to please us, have acquired a super- 
 ficial knowledge of a few of the most obvious parts 
 of the European systems of geography and astro- 
 nomy, but none of them showed any disposition 
 to preach a crusade against the systems under 
 which they had been brought up, and to which 
 they were still as much attached as any of their 
 class. 
 
 The next objection to this scheme is, that even 
 if it were practicable, it is quite unnecessary. The 
 G 6 
 
132 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 object for which it is proposed to raise up teachers 
 endowed with such rare qualifications, has been 
 already accomplished. A revolution has already 
 taken place in men's minds, not only among the 
 unlettered, but what is of far more consequence, 
 among the middle and upper classes, whose pro- 
 perty, activity, and influence will secure the 
 further extension, and the permanence of the 
 change. The people are greedy for European 
 knowledge, and crowd to our seminaries in greater 
 numbers than we can teach them. What more do 
 we want ? Where would have been the wis- 
 dom of entertaining the 1,200 English students 
 who besieged the doors of the Hooghly College 
 with lectures on the absurdities of the Pooranic 
 system of the earth? They already fully ad- 
 mitted the superiority of our system, and came 
 on purpose to be instructed in it; and so it is 
 with thousands of youth in every part of the 
 Bengal provinces. 
 
 It is in vain to direct our instructions to those 
 whose habits of mind are identified with the old 
 system, and whose reputation and subsistence de- 
 pend on its continuance. If Luther had addressed 
 the Roman Catholic clergy, and Bacon the school- 
 men, instead of the rising generation, and all who 
 were not strongly pre-engaged in behalf of any 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. ]33 
 
 system, we should have missed our European Re- 
 formation, both of philosophy and religion. Still 
 less ought we to propagate the very systems, which 
 it is our object to supplant, merely in the hope of 
 being able to ingraft some shoots of European 
 science upon them. Bacon did not educate 
 schoolmen, nor Luther Roman Catholic priests, 
 to become the instruments of their reforms. At 
 this rate we should have been ever learning, and 
 never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. 
 The barren trunk and branches would have 
 been always growing, while the exotic additions to 
 this uncongenial stock, having no root in them- 
 selves, would have produced no fruit, however 
 often they might have been renewed. Neither is 
 it necessary or desirable to carry on war against 
 the old system by direct attacks upon it, or by 
 making offensive assertions of the superiority of 
 our own. The ordinary effect of controversy is to 
 excite hostility and bitterness of spirit. Ram Mo- 
 hun Roy, who comes nearer to the idea of the re- 
 formed teacher of the orientalists than any body 
 else who has appeared, was looked upon as an 
 apostate by his party, and they were roused by his 
 attacks to organise a regular opposition to his views. 
 What we have to do is, not to dispute, but to 
 teach not to prepossess the minds of the 
 
134 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 natives with false systems, and to keep our good 
 instruction till it is too late to be of use, but to 
 get the start of their prejudices by educating 
 them, from the beginning, according to our own 
 views. We ought to cherish European learning, 
 which has already taken deep root and begun to 
 throw out vigorous shoots, leaving the trunk of 
 the old system to a natural and undisturbed de- 
 cay. The rising generation will become the 
 whole nation in the course of a few years. They 
 are all craving for instruction, and we may mould 
 their unoccupied and supple minds in any way 
 we please. 
 
 The ancient system of learning is so constituted 
 that while we have no assistance to expect, we 
 have, at the same time, no opposition to fear, from 
 its native professors. According to the theory of 
 Hinduism, Law, Philosophy and Divinity, are 
 the peculiar inheritance of the Brahmins, while 
 the study of other branches of literature and 
 science is open to the inferior castes. " But 
 practically," Mr. Adam observes, " Brahmins 
 monopolise not only a part, but the whole, of 
 Sanskrit learning. In the two Behar districts, 
 both teachers and students, without a single ex- 
 ception belong to that caste, and the exceptions 
 in the Bengal districts are comparatively few." 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 135 
 
 The Hindu system of learning is, in short, a close 
 monopoly, which has been established by the 
 Brahmins to secure their own pre-eminence. They 
 make no proselytes, because they wish to have no 
 rivals. Why therefore should we strive to extend 
 this system beyond the limits which the Brahmins 
 themselves wish ? They have no notion of making 
 it popular: their object is to confine it within 
 the limits of the sacerdotal class. We, on the 
 contrary, for a long time acted as if we desired 
 to inundate the whole country with it. All the 
 Brahmins aim at is, not to be interfered with in 
 the exclusive enjoyment of their peculiar learn- 
 ing. The education of the mass of the people 
 does not enter into their views : this great field is 
 totally unoccupied; and we may establish on it 
 our own machinery of public instruction, without 
 clashing with any other interest. 
 
 Our plan is based on exactly opposite prin- 
 ciples from that of the Brahmins. Our object is 
 to promote the extension*, not the monopoly of 
 
 * The diffusive spirit of European learning is strikingly exem- 
 plified in the young men who are educated at our institutions. 
 To convince others of the superiority of European knowledge, 
 and to communicate that knowledge to them, is evidently re- 
 garded both as a duty and pleasure by them. It is a matter of 
 course with them : their letters are full of it. Those who are rich 
 establish, or aid in the establishment of schools : those who are 
 
136 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 learning ; to rouse the mind and elevate the 
 character of the whole people, not to keep them 
 in a state of slavish submission to a particular 
 sect. The laity, the great body of the middle 
 and upper classes of native society, are now, for 
 the first time, invited to enjoy the benefits of a 
 liberal education. The key of knowledge has 
 been restored to them ; and they have been com- 
 pensated for their long exclusion, by having 
 opened to them fields of science with which the 
 
 poor often devote their leisure hours to giving gratuitous instruc- 
 tion ; they all aid in the good work to the extent of their ability. 
 There may be something of the zeal of new converts in this, and 
 of a desire to secure their own footing by increasing the number 
 of the followers of the new learning: but, whatever may be the 
 motive, the practice shows that Sanskrit and English literature 
 inspire exactly opposite views of relative duty ; and that while one 
 is eminently selfish and exclusive, the other is benevolent and dif- 
 fusive in its tendency. I believe that, in the great majority of 
 instances, the educated natives are actuated in promoting the 
 spread of European learning by a sincere desire to benefit their 
 countrymen, by communicating to them that from which they 
 have themselves derived so much pleasure and advantage. The 
 same class of persons are distinguished by their liberal support of 
 the public charities at Calcutta, a duty in which the native gen- 
 tlemen who have been brought up under the old system miserably 
 fail. We shall not be surprised at this, when we recollect that our 
 literature is deeply impregnated with the spirit of our beneficent 
 religion ; and that even the modern philosophy, which rejects re- 
 ligion, or professes to supply motives of action independent of it, 
 has for its avowed object the amelioration of the condition of the 
 mass of mankind. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 
 
 137 
 
 learning of the Brahmins is not to be compared. 
 Wealth, numbers, influence, are on their side. 
 The movement is becoming more and more 
 irresistible ; and the power of directing the public 
 mind is passing from those who have exercised it 
 for the last two thousand years to an entirely new 
 set of men. 
 
 Although the knowledge of Sanskrit is con- 
 fined to the Brahminical caste, the Brahmins are 
 by no means practically limited to a studious 
 and religious life : the majority of them, per- 
 haps, get their subsistence by secular pursuits. 
 The number of persons, therefore, devoted to the 
 study of Sanskrit is surprisingly small when it 
 is closely examined : the number of those who 
 study Arabic is still smaller. The following 
 table, extracted from Mr. Adam's report, shows 
 the actual number of teachers and students of 
 those languages, in five of the principal districts of 
 Bengal and Behar : 
 
 
 
 ARABIC. 
 
 SANSKRIT. 
 
 Teachers. 
 
 Students. 
 
 Teachers. 
 
 Students. 
 
 Moorshedabad 
 
 2 
 2 
 12 
 12 
 6 
 
 7 
 5 
 55 
 62 
 29 
 
 24 
 56 
 190 
 27 
 56 
 
 153 
 393 
 1358 
 437 
 214 
 
 
 South Behar 
 
 Tirhoot 
 
 Total . . 
 
 34 
 
 158 
 
 353 
 
 2555 
 
138 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 These facts are in the highest degree encour- 
 aging. In the single town of Hooghly there are 
 as many boys receiving a good English education 
 as the largest number of Sanskrit and Arabic 
 students in any one of the districts reported on 
 by Mr. Adam. In the other four districts, the 
 Oriental students do not exceed the average 
 number of English scholars in those districts, in 
 which our means of instruction have been tole- 
 rably organised. At Calcutta, where there are at 
 least 6,000 boys learning English, the prepon- 
 derance must be overwhelming on the side of 
 European literature. If such be the relative posi- 
 tion of Eastern and Western learning in India *, 
 while the latter is yet in its infancy, how will it be 
 when English education shall have approached its 
 maturity ? 
 
 Besides the 158 Arabic students, Mr. Adam 
 found 3,496 youths learning Persian in the five 
 districts examined by him. But, although Arabic 
 and Persian literature is strictly Mahommedan, 
 
 * The number of persons who cultivate the learned Eastern 
 languages, is certainly much smaller in the Western provinces 
 than in Bengal or Behar. There may be a few more Arabic 
 scholars in some of the principal towns ; but Sanskrit is generally 
 held in no esteem, and is very little attended to. Whole districts 
 might be named in which it would be difficult to find an Arabic or 
 Sanskrit student. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 139 
 
 the majority of the scholars were Hindus ; 
 " Is this comparative large number of Hindu 
 scholars" Mr. Adam continues " the effect of a 
 laudable desire to study a foreign literature placed 
 within their reach? Or is it the effect of an arti- 
 ficial stimulus? This may be judged by com- 
 paring the number of Hindu teachers and scholars 
 of Persian, which, until lately, was almost the ex- 
 clusive language of local administration, with that 
 of Hindu teachers and scholars of Arabic, which is 
 not called into use in the ordinary routine of go- 
 vernment. With regard to teachers ; there is not a 
 single Hindu teacher of Arabic in the five dis- 
 tricts : all are Mussulmans. With regard to scho- 
 lars, there are only 9 Hindu to 149 Mussulman 
 students of Arabic, and consequently 2,087 Hindus 
 to 1,409 Mussulmans who are learning Persian. 
 The small comparative number of Arabic students 
 who are Hindus, and the large comparative num- 
 ber of the Persian scholars of the same class seem 
 to admit of only one explanation; viz., that the 
 study of Persian has been unnaturally forced by the 
 practice of government ; and it seems probable, that 
 even a considerable number of the Mussulmans who 
 learn Persian may be under the same artificial influ- 
 ence" This is another proof, that the tendency of 
 
140 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 our system has hitherto been to encourage not 
 English but Mahommedan learning. 
 
 Persian has now ceased to be the official lan- 
 guage ; and, as it is not recommended by any other 
 consideration, the study of it must soon die out. 
 The inducement to learn Arabic will be greatly 
 diminished, if it will not be altogether annihilated 
 by the promulgation of a code. Sanskrit will, 
 for the same reason, be cultivated by a smaller 
 number of persons than formerly ; and the study 
 of it will be confined to those Brahmins who wish 
 to qualify themselves to be priests and astrologers. 
 Meanwhile the tide has set in strongly in favour of 
 English ; and the popular inclination is seconded 
 by a system of public instruction, which is daily 
 becoming more extended and better organised : an 
 advantage which the old learning never had. The 
 Brahminical monopoly of knowledge is now re- 
 acting on those for whose benefit it was established; 
 and the national curiosity, which had for so many 
 ages been deprived of its natural gratification, is 
 greedily availing itself of the new opening pre- 
 sented to it. If this disposition of the people be 
 only moderately gratified by the establishment so 
 proper means of instruction, we may reasonably 
 expect that ten years hence the number of person 
 studying English will be in the proportion of ten 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 141 
 
 to one to those who will be studying the learned 
 Oriental languages. 
 
 Lastly; it is urged, that as we have succeeded 
 the native chiefs who were the natural patrons of 
 Indian learning, we are bound to give that aid to 
 Oriental scholars which they would have done 
 had they never been displaced by us. 
 
 To promote the spread of knowledge among 
 our subjects is undoubtedly one of the most sacred 
 duties which has devolved on us as the rulers of 
 India: but I cannot admit the correctness of the 
 test by which the Oriental party would determine 
 the kind of knowledge to be taught. Is it meant 
 that we are bound to perpetuate the system 
 patronised by our predecessors, merely because 
 it was patronised by them, however little it 
 may be calculated to promote the welfare of the 
 people? If it be so, the English rule would be 
 the greatest curse to India it is possible to con- 
 ceive. Left to themselves, the inherent rottenness 
 of the native systems must, sooner or later, have 
 brought them to a close. ' But, according to this 
 view of the subject, the resources of European skill 
 are to employed in imparting to them a new princi- 
 ple of duration : knowledge is to be used to perpetu- 
 ate ignorance civilisation to perpetuate barba- 
 rism ; and the iron strength of the English Govern- 
 
142 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 ment to bind faster still the fetters which have so 
 long confined the native mind. This is a new view 
 of our obligations ; and, if it be a just one, it is to be 
 hoped that in pity to our subjects we shall neglect 
 this branch of our duties. Fortunately for them, 
 we have not thought it incumbent on us to act on 
 this rule in other departments of administration. 
 We have not adopted into our system barbarous 
 penal enactments and oppressive modes of collect- 
 ing the revenue because they happened to be 
 favourites with our predecessors. The test of what 
 ought to be taught is, truth and utility. Our pre- 
 decessors consulted the welfare of their subjects to 
 the best of their information : we are bound to 
 do the same by ours. We cannot divest our- 
 selves of this responsibility : the light of European 
 knowledge, and the diffusive spirit of European 
 benevolence give us advantages which our pre- 
 decessors did not possess. A new class of Indian 
 scholars is rising under our rule, more numerous 
 and better instructed than those who went before 
 them ; and, above all, plans are in progress for 
 enlightening the great body of the people as far as 
 their leisure will permit an undertaking which 
 never entered into the imagination of any of the 
 former rulers of India. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 143 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 Proofs that the Time has arrived for taking up the 
 Question of National Education. The Disuse of the 
 Persian Language. The many important Bearings of 
 this Change. The Codification of the Mahommedan 
 and Hindu Law. The increased Employment of the 
 Natives The concurrence of all Classes of the Com- 
 munity toivards the Object. 
 
 MANY circumstances indicate that the time has 
 arrived for taking up the question of Indian 
 national instruction in a way in which it has never 
 yet been taken up. Obstacles, which formerly 
 prevented the Government from taking decisive 
 steps, have disappeared : unexpected facilities 
 have come to light. The mind of India has taken 
 a new spring. Substitutes are required to fill up 
 the void created by the passing away of antiquated 
 systems. The people want instruction : the Go- 
 vernment wants well educated servants to fill the 
 responsible situations which have been opened to 
 the natives. Every thing concurs to prove that 
 this important subject ought no longer to be re- 
 
144 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 garded only as an amusement for the leisure hours 
 of benevolent persons. It must now be taken up 
 as a great public question, with that seriousness 
 and resolution to make the necessary sacrifices 
 which the interests at stake require. 
 
 Till lately the use of the Persian language in all 
 official proceedings bound down the educated 
 classes of the natives, in the Bengal and Agra pre- 
 sidencies, to the study of a thoroughly debasing and 
 worthless literature, and the effect was the exclusion 
 and degradation both of English and of the verna- 
 cular languages. This spell has been dissolved : the 
 vernacular language has been substituted for the 
 Persian throughout the revenue department; and 
 the same measure is now in progress in the judicial 
 department. The extraordinary ease and rapidity 
 with which this change was effected in the revenue 
 administration, proves that this event took place in 
 the fullness of time, and furnishes a happy prog- 
 nostic of future improvement. In Bengal, the Per- 
 sian language had disappeared from the collectors' 
 offices at the end of a month almost as completely as 
 if it had never been used. It melted away like snow. 
 This measure has so many important bearings 
 on the welfare of the people, and the character of 
 our government, that I shall be excused for mak- 
 ing a few remarks on it, although they will be 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 145 
 
 only indirectly connected with my subject. A 
 very general opinion has prevailed for some years 
 past, that Persian ought to be discarded; but 
 there was not the same concurrence of sentiment 
 as to what language ought to be substituted for it. 
 One party advocated the use of English, on the 
 ground, that it was of more importance that the 
 judges who had to decide a case should thoroughly 
 understand it, than the persons themselves who 
 were interested in it : that if the European officers 
 used their own language in official proceedings, 
 they would be much more independent of 
 the pernicious influence of their administrative 
 officers; and that the general encouragement 
 which would be given to the study of English, by 
 its adoption as the official language, would give a 
 powerful impulse to the progress of native enlight- 
 enment. Some years ago this opinion was the 
 prevailing one among those who were favourable 
 to the plan of giving the natives a liberal European 
 education ; and it was even adopted by the Bengal 
 government, as will be seen by the extract at the 
 foot of the page*, from a letter from the secretary 
 in the Persian department, to the Committee of 
 Public Instruction, dated the '26th June, 1829. 
 
 *" One of the most important questions connected with the 
 present discussion is, that of the nature and degree of encourage- 
 H 
 
146 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 Another party advocated the use of the verna- 
 cular language ; and argued, that the substitution 
 
 ment to the study of the English language, which it is neces- 
 sary and desirable for the Government to hold out independently of 
 providing books, teachers, and the ordinary means of tuition. 
 Your Committee has observed, that unless English be made the 
 language of business, political negotiation, and jurisprudence, it 
 will not be universally or extensively studied by our native sub- 
 jects. Mr. Mackenzie, in the note annexed to your Report, dated 
 the 3rd instant, urges strongly the expediency of a declaration by 
 Government, that the English will be eventually used as the lan- 
 guage of business ; otherwise, with the majority of our scholars, he 
 thinks, that all we * do to encourage the acquisition must be 
 nugatory ;' and recommends, that it be immediately notified, that, 
 after the expiration of three years, a decided preference will be 
 given to candidates for office, who may add a knowledge of 
 English to other qualifications. The Delhi Committee have also 
 advocated, with great force and earnestness, the expediency of 
 rendering the English the language of our Public Tribunals and 
 Correspondence, and the necessity of making known that such is 
 our eventual purpose, if we wish the study to be successfully and 
 extensively prosecuted. 
 
 " Impressed with a deep conviction of the importance of the sub- 
 ject, and cordially disposed to promote the great object of 
 improving India, by spreading abroad the lights of European 
 knowledge, morals, and civilisation, his Lordship in Council, 
 has no hesitation in stating to your Committee, and in authorising 
 you to announce to all concerned in the superintendence of your 
 native seminaries, that it is the wish and admitted policy of the 
 British Government to render its own language gradually and 
 eventually the language of public business throughout the country ; 
 and that it will omit no opportunity of giving every reasonable 
 and practicable degree of encouragement to the execution of this 
 project. At the same time, his Lordship in Council, is not pre- 
 darcd to come forward with any distinct and specific pledge as to 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 147 
 
 of one foreign language for another was not what 
 was wanted ; that as fewer natives would know 
 English than Persian for some time to come, the 
 
 the period and manner of effecting so great a change in the system 
 of our internal economy ; nor is such a pledge considered to be at 
 all indispensable to the gradual and cautious fulfilment of our 
 views. It is conceived that, assuming the existence of that dis- 
 position to acquire a knowledge of English, which is declared in 
 the correspondence now before Government, and forms the ground- 
 work of our present proceedings, a general assurance to the above 
 effect, combined with the arrangements in train for providing the 
 means of instruction, will ensure our obtaining at no distant 
 period a certain, though limited, number of respectable native 
 English scholars ; and more effectual and decisive measures may 
 be adopted hereafter, when a body of competent teachers shall have 
 been provided in the Upper Provinces, and the superiority of an 
 English education is more generally recognised and appreciated. 
 
 " As intimated, however, by the Delhi Committee, the use of the 
 English in our public correspondence with natives of distinction, 
 more especially in that which is of a complimentary nature, would 
 in itself be an important demonstration in favour of the new 
 course of study, as serving to indicate pretty clearly the future 
 intentions of Government ; and there appears to be no objection to 
 the immediate application of this incentive to a certain extent, and 
 under the requisite limitations. The expediency, indeed, of revising 
 the Governor General's correspondence with the higher classes of 
 natives on the above principles, has before, more than once, under- 
 gone discussion and consideration ; and the Governor-general in 
 Council, deems the present a suitable occasion for resolving to 
 address the native chiefs and nobility of India in the English lan- 
 guage, (especially those residing in our own provinces,) whenever 
 there is reason to believe, either that they have themselves acquired 
 a knowledge of it, or have about them persons possessing that 
 knowledge, and generally in all instances where the adoption of the 
 new medium of correspondence would be acceptable and agreeable." 
 
 H 2 
 
148 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 influence of the subordinate native officers would 
 be rather increased than diminished by the change ; 
 that if the European officers were able to get 
 through their business without using the ver- 
 nacular language, they would naturally neglect 
 the study of it ; and that, although the plan pro- 
 posed would give an artificial stimulus to the 
 study of English, it would condemn the vernacular 
 languages, the increased cultivation of which 
 was of still more importance, to continued ex- 
 clusion and contempt. To these another argu- 
 ment has been added by the course of events; 
 which is, that as by the late changes in the judi- 
 cial system every civil case may be decided in the 
 first instance by a native judge, the general intro- 
 duction of English as the official language would 
 be nearly impracticable. 
 
 Every body is now agreed in giving the pre- 
 ference to the vernacular language. It is a great 
 point gained for the efficiency and popularity, and 
 consequently for the permanence of our rule, that 
 the European officers have now been placed in 
 such a position that they must make themselves 
 thoroughly acquainted with the language which 
 the people themselves speak.* All other media have 
 
 * The degree to which the European officers in Bengal are 
 ignorant of the popular language would hardly be credited. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 149 
 
 been discarded, and public officers cannot discharge 
 any of their duties unless they are familiar with it. 
 As candidates for civil employ in India will now 
 have only the vernacular language to attend to, the 
 preparatory course of instruction ought to be 
 lengthened and the examinations increased in 
 strictness ; and as, after they enter.upon active life, 
 almost every thing they hear, and speak, and read 
 in the performance of their public duties, will be in 
 the popular language, they must soon acquire the 
 same, or nearly the same, facility of transacting 
 business in it as in English. 
 
 This great point having been gained, every 
 thing else will come out right. Being now brought 
 into direct communication with the people, the 
 European officers will be more independent of 
 their executive officers : they will see and know 
 
 When I left Calcutta only one judge of the Sudder was believed 
 to know it; and perhaps now there is not one. Every kind of judi- 
 cial business was transacted in Persian, which is a language very 
 unlike Bengalee ; and the evidence of parties in criminal proceed- 
 ings, which, by positive orders from the Court of Directors, is taken 
 down in the language in which it is delivered, was, and perhaps 
 still is, translated from the vernacular language into Persian, on 
 the papers being submitted to the superior court. Public officers in 
 the Upper Provinces were always acquainted with the vernacular 
 language ; and now that they have to transact business in it, they 
 will become more familiar with it than ever. 
 
 H 3 
 
150 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 more of the people, will take a greater interest 
 in their affairs, and will make their influence 
 more felt among them. The people, on the other 
 hand, will obtain a much better insight into what 
 is going on in the courts than it was possible for 
 them to do while the proceedings were conducted 
 in a foreign language. They will exercise a 
 greater check over the subordinate native officers. 
 They will be less in the hands of their own agents. 
 Justice will be better administered ; and the people 
 will have much more confidence in the adminis- 
 tration of it. The field of selection for public em- 
 ployment, instead of being confined, as heretofore, 
 to those who were familiarly acquainted with the 
 Persian language, will be extended to every 
 educated person : entirely new classes of people 
 will be brought in to aid in the cheap and upright 
 administration of public affairs : individuals who, 
 without any higher literary attainment than a 
 good knowledge of their own language, have ac- 
 quired in private life a character for ability and 
 integrity, and still more the young men who 
 have received at the public seminaries the best 
 education the country can afford, will infuse new 
 life and new morality into the system. As learn- 
 has ceased to be monopolised by the Brahmins, 
 so public employment has ceased to be mono- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 151 
 
 polised by the class of people who are acquainted 
 with Persian. 
 
 ^Lastly; by this measure a great impulse will 
 be given to the study, not of English only, or 
 of the vernacular language only, but both of 
 English and of the vernacular language. -Those 
 natives who can afford to give their children a 
 liberal education, will not cease to do so because 
 it is no longer necessary to be acquainted with 
 Persian. They are fully aware that the best edu- 
 cated persons generally succeed best in every pur- 
 suit of life ; and in particular that they are ap- 
 pointed, in preference to others, to situations under 
 Government. The vernacular language does not 
 furnish the means of obtaining a liberal education : 
 English does so in a much higher degree than any 
 other language to which the natives of India have 
 access ; so much so, that the knowledge neces- 
 sary for the practice of some professions those of 
 a Physician, a Surgeon, an Engineer, an Architect, 
 and a Surveyor, for instance, can be acquired 
 through no other medium. These motives will 
 be more than sufficient to stimulate the middle 
 and upper classes of natives to the cultivation of 
 English. Their own languages, on the other hand, 
 have been relieved from the state of proscription 
 and contempt to which they had been for ages 
 H 4 
 
152 Otf THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 condemned. They have been erected into the 
 medium for transacting nearly the whole of the 
 public business of the country. It will be an 
 object to all both to those who look forward to 
 be employed in any situation under Government, 
 and to those whose concerns bring them into 
 connection with any public court or office to 
 have a competent knowledge of these languages. 
 Those who receive any education will learn to 
 read them. To write them with precision and 
 elegance will be an attainment coveted by the 
 most highly educated persons. 
 
 The changes which are taking place in the legal 
 system of the country is another cause of the move- 
 ment in native society. Buried under the obscu- 
 rity of Sanskrit and Arabic erudition, mixed up 
 with the dogmas of religion, and belonging to two 
 concurrent systems made up of the dicta of sages 
 of different ages and schools, the laws are at pre- 
 sent in the highest degree uncertain, redundant, 
 and contradictory. To obtain a moderate acquaint- 
 ance with either Mahommedan or Hindu law is 
 the work of a whole life, and is therefore the busi- 
 ness of a separate profession, with which the bar 
 and bench have nothing in common. The expo- 
 sitors of the law are the muftis and pundits ; men, 
 who deeply imbued with the spirit of the ancient 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 153 
 
 learning to which they are devoted, live only in 
 past ages, and are engaged in a perpetual struggle 
 to maintain the connection between the barbarism 
 of antiquity and the manners and opinions of the 
 present time. Their oracular responses are too 
 often the result of ignorance, pedantry, or corrup- 
 tion ; but as they are few in number, and have a 
 monopoly of this kind of learning, it is almost im- 
 possible to convict them. The judges and bar- 
 risters, being excluded by the anomalous state of 
 the legal system from the mysteries of their own 
 profession, can exercise no control over them. 
 The people, who know no law except what happens 
 from time to time to fall from the lips of the muf- 
 tis and pundits, are still more helpless. The inju- 
 rious influence of such a state of things as this, both 
 on the administration of justice and on the general 
 advancement of the people in knowledge and civili- 
 sation, can be better conceived than described. 
 
 This fabric has been overthrown by the deci- 
 sion of the British Parliament, that a Commission 
 should be appointed to ascertain and digest the laws 
 of India. The alliance between bad law and false 
 religion has been dissolved; and as the natives will 
 now be able to consider the civil and criminal codes 
 only as they affect their temporal welfare, the way 
 will be opened for the introduction of those fun> 
 H 5 
 
154 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 damental changes in the frame-work of native so- 
 ciety which are essential to its complete regenera- 
 tion. The class of muftis and pundits, being no 
 longer required, will cease to exist; and those who 
 are learned in the law, and those who actually ad- 
 minister it, will for the future be the same persons. 
 Legal knowledge will pass from pedants and 
 antiquarians to persons who are engaged in the 
 business and sympathise with the feelings of the 
 present age. An improved bench and bar will 
 both ensure a certain and prompt administra- 
 tion of the law, and give that aid to general 
 improvement which may always be expected from 
 a highly cultivated body of men, whose profession 
 obliges them to be familiar with the interests, and 
 attentive to the favour of society. 
 
 This happy change, however, will be slowly and 
 imperfectly effected if it be not supported by cor- 
 responding arrangements in the department of 
 public instruction. The Indian lawyers of the old 
 school, who fortunately are not numerous, will 
 be laid on the shelf on the promulgation of the new 
 code. An entirely new set must be trained to take 
 their place. It will be as easy now to give instruc- 
 tion in law as in any other branch of knowledge. 
 Instead of an endless variety "of contradictory max- 
 ims, there will be one plain consistent body of law. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 155 
 
 Instead of legal knowledge being scattered through 
 several languages two of which are among the 
 most difficult in the world it will all be collected 
 in our own language and in that of our native sub- 
 jects.* The colleges established for giving instruc- 
 i ion in Mahommedan and Hindu law, may now, in 
 perfect accordance with their original design, be 
 employed in educating enlightened men ; and the 
 plan of education at all the other seminaries may 
 be so arranged, that to whatever extent we succeed 
 in improving the moral worth and cultivating the 
 intellect of our subjects, to that same extent we 
 shall provide materials for the pure and intelligent 
 administration of the law. 
 
 Another great change has of late years been 
 
 * The difficulties in the way of giving legal instruction at the 
 Government seminaries, which are now on the point of being re- 
 moved, were thus noticed by the Education Committee, in their 
 report for 1835: " Law would occupy the third place; but at 
 present this branch of instruction is attended with many difficul- 
 ties, arising from the number of conflicting systems of law which 
 prevail in this country, and the various languages in which they 
 are embodied. The labours of the Law Commissioners, will, we 
 hope, soon supply a condensed body of Anglo- Indian law, in the 
 English and vernacular languages ; and it will then be proper to 
 adopt measures to procure qualified legal instructors for each of 
 our more important seminaries. We conceive that great advan- 
 tages must result to the judicial administration from encouraging 
 the best educated, who are also, we hope, the most moral and 
 upright of the native youth, to seek employment in it." 
 
 H 6 
 
156 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 made in our Indian administration, which ought 
 alone to excite us to corresponding exertions for 
 the education of the natives. The system esta- 
 blished by Lord Cornwallis was based upon the 
 principle of doing every thing by European agency. 
 Europeans are, no doubt, superior to the natives 
 in some of the most important qualities of adminis- 
 trators ; but the public revenue did not admit of 
 the employment of a sufficient number of them. 
 The wheels of Government therefore soon became 
 clogged : more than half of the business of the 
 country remained unperformed ; and at last it be- 
 came necessary to abandon a plan, which, after a 
 fair trial, had completely broken down. The plan 
 which Lord William Bentinck substituted for it was, 
 to transact the public business by native agency, 
 under European superintendence ; and this change 
 is now in progress in all the different branches of 
 the administration. We have already native judges, 
 collectors, and opium and salt agents ; and it is now 
 proposed to have native magistrates. The native 
 collectors are often vested with the same powers as 
 the European collectors; and it has been lately 
 enacted, that all civil suits, of whatever amount, 
 may be tried in the first instance by the native 
 judges. 
 
 The success of this great measure depends en- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 157 
 
 tirely on the fitness of the natives for the exercise 
 of the new functions to which they have been 
 called. It is easier to dub a person collector or 
 magistrate, than to secure in him the possession 
 of the qualities which those offices require ; and the 
 lowest imbecility as well as the highest efficiency 
 may be found under the same official title. Mea- 
 sures have been adopted for educating native phy- 
 sicians ; and is it of less importance that native 
 judges should be professionally trained? Care is 
 taken that the young Englishmen destined to hold 
 office in India are properly instructed ; and is no 
 exertion necessary to secure integrity and mental 
 cultivation in the native service, which now forms 
 at least as important a part of the general admi- 
 nistration as the European officers themselves? 
 When the comparative state of morals and educa- 
 tion in the classes from which the European and 
 native servants are respectively taken, is consider- 
 ed, it will appear that we could much better do 
 without the interference of the state with the pre- 
 vious training of the former than of the latter. The 
 native functionaries have acquitted themselves ex- 
 tremely well, considering the corrupt school to 
 which most of them belonged and the suddenness 
 with which they were called to the performance 
 of new and important duties ; but enough instances 
 
158 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 of delinquency have occurred to prove, that the 
 country will not reap the fall benefit of the change 
 that has been made, until we not only open prefer- 
 ment to the natives, but also furnish them with 
 the means by which they may merit that prefer- 
 ment, and learn how to use it; until we not only 
 give them power, but also secure, by a previous 
 training, the existence of those qualities with the 
 aid of which alone power can be beneficially ex- 
 ercised. 
 
 The necessity of the case obliged us to begin at 
 the wrong end, and we cannot too soon supply the 
 deficiency. The business of the country is now 
 done ; but we must strive that it should be well 
 done. There is now a sufficient number of judges 
 and collectors ; but we must endeavour to provide 
 a succession of honest and well instructed judges 
 and collectors. We want native functionaries of a 
 new stamp, trained in a new school ; and adding 
 to the acuteness, patience, and intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the language and manners of the peo- 
 ple which may always be expected in natives, 
 some degree of the enlightened views and inte- 
 grity of character which distinguish the European 
 officers. Our national interest and honour, our 
 duty to our subjects, and even justice to our na- 
 tive servants themselves, require this at our hands. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 159 
 
 These, however, are no new sentiments : they have 
 been repeatedly urged by the Court of Directors 
 on the Indian government ; and considering how 
 deeply the success of our administration, not in 
 one only, but in all its different branches, is con- 
 cerned in the establishment of a system of public 
 instruction adequate to the existing wants of the 
 country, it may be hoped that the necessary funds 
 will soon be placed at the disposal of the Governor- 
 general in Council. 
 
 But this part of the subject has another, and 
 perhaps a still more important aspect. The same 
 means which will secure for the Government a body 
 of intelligent and upright native servants, will sti- 
 mulate the mental activity, and improve the morals 
 of the people at large. The Government cannot 
 make public employment the reward of distin- 
 guished merit, without encouraging merit in all 
 who look forward to public employ : it cannot 
 open schools for educating its servants, without 
 diffusing knowledge among all classes of its 
 subjects. Those who take their notions from Eng- 
 land, or even from most of the Continental nations, 
 can have no conception what an immensely power- 
 ful engine, either for good or evil, an Asiatic go- 
 vernment is. In India, the Government is every- 
 thing. Nearly the whole rental of the country 
 
160 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 passes into its coffers. Its civil and military esta- 
 blishments are on the largest scale. The mercan- 
 tile, medical, sacerdotal, and other professions, 
 which absorb the greater part of our English youth 
 of the middle class, are either held in low esteem, 
 or are confined, at present, to particular castes ; 
 and almost the only idea which a liberally educated 
 native has of rising in life, is by attaching himself 
 to the public service. The Government, therefore, 
 by the power which it possesses of stimulating and 
 directing the minds of those who look forward to 
 public employ, is able to stimulate and direct the 
 mind of the whole nation. The candidates for 
 situations in the public service comprise the largest 
 and best portion of the educated class; and the 
 educated class always draws after it the rest of the 
 people. 
 
 A plan has lately been suggested* to the Su- 
 
 * The Sudder Dewanee Adawlut, in their report for 1836, 
 strongly represented the necessity of securing a regular supply of 
 properly educated young men for employment in the judicial de- 
 partment ; and the Education Committee, to whom the subject was 
 referred, suggested the plan above described. The remarks of the 
 Sudder Dewanee Adawlut, are as follows : 
 
 " The reports of the local authorities generally, however, speak 
 favourably of these two grades of native judges. Regarding the 
 moonsiffs, there appears to be a greater difference of opinion, but, 
 under experienced and efficient Judges, the Court entertain hopes 
 that the moonsiffs will be ultimately found to perform their duty 
 in a correct and satisfactory manner. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 161 
 
 preme Government, by the Education Committee, 
 by which this immensely important influence may 
 
 " With a view, however, of introducing a better educated class of 
 individuals into this office, the Court have directed me to state, thai 
 they are of opinion, that some well-considered system should be 
 immediately adopted by Government, for the purpose of securing 
 a regular succession of duly qualified native judicial officers. N6 
 peculiar acquirements are at present looked for in a native Judge, 
 beyond general good character, respectability of family, and 
 a competent knowledge of the Persian and Bengalese lan- 
 guages. No liberal or polite education, no legal acquirements, 
 no knowledge even of the general forms and rules of practice, 
 prescribed by the regulations of Government, is generally possessed 
 by any candidate for office, save perhaps in the latter instance by 
 some few individuals, who have been attached to the courts in 
 subordinate situations, as mohurrers, or moonshees, or vakeels, 
 and who are, therefore, well acquainted with the general routine 
 of our proceedings. 
 
 " As the readiest mode of improving the present system of no- 
 mination, the Court would suggest the appointment of a regular 
 professor, at all the Government Colleges, for the purpose of in- 
 structing the native youth in the laws and regulations of govern- 
 ment, and for enabling the young men brought up at these insti- 
 tutions to qualify themselves for the judicial and revenue branches 
 of the public service. To each college possessing such a pro- 
 fessor, whether, indeed, supported by Government or otherwise, 
 and whether in Calcutta or at any city in the interior, one or two 
 moonsiffships and uncovenanted deputy collectorships might be 
 presented as prizes every year, and these prizes should be bestowed 
 on any native youth, above the age of twenty-five years, who 
 might be found duly qualified, on public examination, for the 
 situation ; the name of the successful candidate should then be 
 placed on the records of this court, in order that he might be em- 
 ployed in Bengal or Behar, according to his parentage, directly a 
 vacancy occurred ; and in the mean time he should be obliged to 
 
162 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 be applied to the development of the mind and 
 morals of our subjects, in the most extensive, effec- 
 tual, and unobjectionable manner. It is proposed 
 that public examinations should be annually held 
 at each of the great towns in the Bengal and Agra 
 presidencies, by officers appointed to make the cir- 
 cuit of the country for that purpose ; that these 
 examinations should be open to all comers, wher- 
 ever they may have been educated; that those 
 who acquit themselves well should be ranked ac- 
 cording to their merit; and that the list so ar- 
 ranged, together with the necessary particulars 
 regarding the branches of knowledge in which 
 each person distinguished himself, should be sent 
 to the neighbouring functionaries, to enable them 
 to fill up from it the situations in their gift which 
 
 continue his legal studies at the college, a monthly personal 
 allowance of sixteen or twenty rupees being granted to him by 
 Government for his support. The Court would further recom- 
 mend that the monthly salaries of the moonsiffs be fixed at 
 150 rupees. The very important duties now confided to the 
 native Judges undoubtedly renders the adoption of some system- 
 atic plan of education for these officers indispensably necessary ; and 
 the Court therefore beg to urge that these suggestions may receive 
 the early consideration of Government." 
 
 After this, the abolition of the use of Persian was resolved 
 on ; and the only real obstacle to the accomplishment of the wishes 
 of the Judges of the Sudder Dewanee was thus removed. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 163 
 
 fall vacant. The European officers generally take so 
 little interest in the disposal of their patronage, 
 and are often so much at a loss for qualified can- 
 didates, that they would gladly avail themselves 
 of this mode of replenishing the lower grades of 
 the native service. After the young men had once 
 been appointed, their further progress would, of 
 course, depend upon their merits and length of 
 service. 
 
 This plan, it will be observed, rests on a much 
 wider basis than the Government seminaries. It 
 is intended to encourage and reward mental culti- 
 vation wherever it exists ; and to engage in the 
 service of the country the best talent the country 
 can afford, without any reference to particular places 
 of education. The impulse, therefore, will be com- 
 municated to all alike. The boy from a public 
 school will be brought into competition with the boy 
 who has been educated in his father's house. The 
 students from the Government colleges will contend 
 with the young men brought up in the missionary 
 seminaries. The Hindus and Mahommedans will 
 vie with Christians of every denomination. There 
 will be no distinction made, except that of superior 
 merit. The emulation among the young men will 
 extend to the conductors of the seminaries at which 
 they are trained ; the merits and defects of dif- 
 
164 ON THE EDUCATION O 
 
 ferent plans of education will become apparent 
 from the result of the annual examinations, and 
 those which are found to be most successful will 
 be generally adopted. The striking effects pro- 
 duced by literary competition, when much less free 
 than this, and excited by much inferior rewards, 
 will give some idea of what may be expected from 
 a competition which will be open to all classes of 
 our Indian subjects, and will be stimulated by all 
 the influence and patronage of the Indian govern- 
 ment. 
 
 But the most decisive proof that the time has 
 arrived for taking up the subject of national edu- 
 cation is, that all classes of the community are now 
 ready to co-operate with the Government. A few 
 years ago, the education of the natives was regarded 
 by the Europeans either with aversion or contempt, 
 as they happened to consider it as a dangerous in- 
 terference with native prejudice, or as a chimerical 
 undertaking unworthy of a man of sense. Now 
 there are few stations at which there are not one or 
 more European officers, who would be glad of an 
 opportunity of aiding the Committee in the pro- 
 secution of its plans. The discussions which 
 took place between the advocates of the rival sys- 
 tems, by strongly drawing attention to the ques- 
 tion, and, in a manner, forcing people to an 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 165 
 
 examination of it, greatly contributed to this result. 
 All are now more or less interested and well informed 
 on the subject; and what is of still more importance, 
 all are of one mind about it, and have a settled and 
 well understood plan to pursue. Whatever differ- 
 ences of opinion may linger among retired Indians 
 in England, there are none now in India ; or, at 
 least, the adherents of the old system form such 
 an exceedingly small minority, that it is unneces- 
 sary to mention them when speaking of the gene- 
 ral sense of the European community. 
 
 The Missionaries, taking advantage of the 
 prevailing feeling, have established numerous ex- 
 cellent seminaries, at which many thousand native 
 youth are receiving a sound, and in some cases 
 a liberal English education. English, Scotch, 
 Americans, and Germans, concur in availing them- 
 selves of the English language as a powerful in- 
 strument of native improvement. English priests, 
 lately sent from Rome to take charge of the 
 Roman Catholic Christians of Portuguese and 
 native descent, have had recourse to the same 
 means for enlightening their numerous and de- 
 graded flocks. The Portuguese language (another 
 instance of the confusion of tongues which has so 
 long distracted and dissipated the mind of India) 
 has been discarded from the churches and schools : 
 
166 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 an English Liturgy has been introduced, and large 
 English seminaries have been established. There 
 are also institutions at which the youth of English 
 and of mixed English and native descent receive as 
 good a scientific and literary education as is consist- 
 ent with the early period at which they enter into 
 active life. Most of our schoolmasters have been 
 drawn from this class; and, as they possess the 
 trustworthiness and a great degree of the energy of 
 the European character, combined with an intimate 
 acquaintance with the native habits and language, 
 they are no mean auxiliaries in the cause of native 
 education.* 
 
 This harmony of effort, however, would be of 
 little avail if it were not founded on a real desire 
 on the part of the natives themselves to obtain the 
 benefit of European instruction. The curiosity 
 of the people is thoroughly roused, and the passion 
 for English knowledge has penetrated the most 
 obscure, and extended to the most remote parts of 
 India. The steam boats, passing up and down the 
 Ganges, are boarded by native boys, begging, not 
 
 * The institutions which have rendered most service in this 
 way are, the Verulam Academy, the Parental Academic Insti- 
 tution, the High School, and the Military Orphan Asylum. 
 Similar assistance may now be expected from the noble foundation 
 of General Martin, and a large Proprietory School which has lately 
 been established in the Himalaya Mountains. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 167 
 
 for money, but for books.* The chiefs of the 
 Punjab, a country which has never been subdued by 
 the British arms, made so many applications to the 
 Political Agent on the frontier to procure an Eng- 
 lish education for their children, that the Go- 
 vernment has found it necessary to attach a 
 schoolmaster to his establishment. The tide of 
 literature is even rolling back from India to Per- 
 sia, and the Supreme Government lately sent a 
 large supply of English books for the use of the 
 King of Persia's military seminary, the students 
 of which were reported to be actuated by a strong 
 zeal for European learning. The extent to which 
 the Pasha of Egypt is engaged in enlightening his 
 subjects, through the medium of English and the 
 other European languages, is too well known to 
 
 * Some gentlemen coming to Calcutta were astonished at the 
 eagerness with which they were pressed for books by a troop of 
 boys, who boarded the steamer from an obscure place, called 
 Comercolly. A Plato was lying on the table, and one of the party 
 asked a boy whether that would serve his purpose. " Oh yes," 
 he exclaimed, " give me any book; all I want is a book." The 
 gentleman at last hit upon the expedient of cutting up an old 
 Quarterly Review, and distributing the articles among them. In 
 the evening, when some of the party went ashore, the boys of the 
 town flocked round them, expressing their regret that there wa 
 no English school in the place, and saying that they hoped that 
 the Governor-general, to whom they had made an application on 
 the subject when he passed on his way up the country, would es- 
 tablish one. 
 
168 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 need any detail. The time has certainly arrived 
 when the ancient debt of civilisation which Europe 
 owes to Asia* is about to be repaid ; and the sci- 
 ences, cradled in the East and brought to maturity 
 in the West, are now by a final effort about to 
 overspread the world, f 
 
 * The early civilisation of Greece by settlers from Phoenicia 
 and Egypt ; the philosophical systems of Pythagoras and Plato ; 
 the knowledge of chemistry, medicine, and mathematics, which 
 emanated in a later age from the Arabian schools of Cordova 
 and Salerno, attest the obligations we are under to the Eastern 
 world. The greatest boon of all, our admirable system of arith- 
 metical notation, which has facilitated in an incalculable degree 
 the improvement of the sciences and the transaction of every 
 kind of business for which the use of numbers is requisite, 
 is distinctly traceable through the Arabs to the Hindus : we call 
 it the Arabian, the Arabs call it the Hindu system, and the 
 Hindus attribute the invention of it to their gods. It has been 
 practised in India from a period which precedes all written and 
 traditionary memorials. 
 
 f It may be as well to mention some of the probable causes of 
 the existing state of native feeling on this subject. The first is the 
 same which gave rise to the revival of learning, and the cultivation 
 of the vernacular languages in Europe, or the increase in the num- 
 ber and importance of the middle class of society. External peace, 
 internal security of property, arising from a regular administra- 
 tion of justice, increased facilities to trade, the permanent settle- 
 ment of the land revenue of the Lower, and a long settlement of 
 thAt of the Upper Provinces, have all contributed to raise up a class 
 between the nabob and the ryot, which derives its consequence from 
 the exercise ^industry and enterprise, which is possessed of the lei- 
 sure necessary Wr literary pursuits, and which, bein^ a creation of 
 our won, is naturally inclined to imitate us, and to adopt our views. 
 Secondly, Thcpeop'o feeling themselves safe in their persons and 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 169 
 
 property, and being relieved from the harassing anxieties which 
 daily attend those who live under a barbarous arbitrary govern- 
 ment, enjoy that peace of mind, without which it is impossible 
 that letters can be successfully cultivated. Thirdly, The natives 
 cannot fail to be struck by our moral and intellectual supe- 
 riority ; and they are led, by the combined influence of curiosity 
 and emulation, to search for the causes of it in our literature. 
 This motive has led the Russians and Turks, and other entirely 
 independent nations, to cultivate foreign literature ; and it cannot, 
 therefore, excite wonder that the Hindus, who stand in such a 
 close relation to us, should have been influenced by it. Fourthly, 
 A liberal English education is the surest road to promotion. It is 
 by far the best education the natives can get ; and the Govern- 
 ment must always select the best instructed persons that are to be 
 had, for the public service. Lastly, The Hindus have always been 
 a literary people ; but as the body of the nation were shut out by 
 the Brahmins from all participation in their own learning, they 
 eagerly avail themselves of what is now offered by us to their 
 acceptance, recommended as it is by so many attractions. 
 
170 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 The Establishment of a Seminary at each Zillah Sta- 
 tion, a necessary Preliminary to further Operations. 
 
 The Preparation of Boohs in the Vernacular Lan- 
 guages. A Law of Copyright required. Native 
 Education in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. 
 
 The Establishment of a comprehensive System of 
 public Instruction for the whole of British India 
 
 urgently required. The public Importance of a 
 separate Provision being made for the Prosecution of 
 Researches into ancient Asiatic Literature. 
 
 To proceed to practical details ; all we have to do 
 is, to follow out the plan which has been steadily 
 pursued since March, 1835. Seminaries have been 
 established at the head stations of about half the 
 Zillahs in the Bengal and Agra presidencies ; and 
 the first thing to be done is, to establish similar insti- 
 tutions in the remaining forty Zillahs. At the ave- 
 rage rate of 250 rupees per mensem for each semi- 
 nary, this would require an annual addition to the 
 fund of 120,000 rupees, or about ^12,000 a-year.* 
 
 * As the supply of educated persons increases, schoolmasters 
 will be obtained at lower salaries ; and the saving arising from this 
 source, and from the falling in of stipends to students, inay be 
 applied to the improvement of the seminaries. This is inde- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 171 
 
 Whatever system of popular instruction it may 
 hereafter be resolved to organise in India, these 
 Zillah seminaries must form the basis of it ; and, 
 as some time must be allowed for their opera- 
 tion before we can with advantage proceed a 
 step further, their early establishment is a mat- 
 ter of importance. Every part of our domi- 
 nions having the same claim upon us, there is 
 exactly the same reason for establishing a cen- 
 tral school in one Zillah as in another. In- 
 deed, the motives for carrying out the plan 
 to its full extent are much stronger than those 
 for originally commencing it. The inhabitants 
 of a Zillah in which a seminary has been for 
 some time established, have a very unfair advan- 
 tage given them over the inhabitants of the 
 neighbouring Zillahs. Calcutta has lately been 
 supplying native deputy-collectors to the whole of 
 Bengal and Behar, because it was the only place 
 at which educated natives were to be obtained in 
 any number. This was justified by the emer- 
 gency of the case; but, as a general rule, it is 
 very desirable to employ the natives as much as 
 possible in their own neighbourhood. Strangers, 
 
 pendent of the contributions of the European and native commu- 
 nity, and of the boys themselves, which will never be found defi- 
 cint where the Government sets an example of liberality. 
 
 i 2 
 
172 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 invested with power, are looked upon with jealousy ; 
 and they are generally in a hurry to make what 
 they can, and return to their own homes. On the 
 other hand, respectable natives are more easily 
 induced to take service, and are more under the 
 control of public opinion in their own district than 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The next step will be, to extend the system 
 from town to country; from the influential few to 
 the mass of the people. This part of the subject 
 is not of pressing importance, because the mate- 
 rials of a national system must be prepared in the 
 Zillah seminaries before they can be employed in 
 the organisation of the Purgunnah and village 
 schools. The youth of the upper and middle 
 classes, both in town and country, will receive such 
 an education at the head station of the Zillah as 
 will make them willing and intelligent auxiliaries 
 to us hereafter in extending the same advantages 
 to the rest of their countrymen. The Zillah 
 seminaries will be the normal schools, in which a 
 new set of village schoolmasters will be trained, 
 and to which many of the existing schoolmasters 
 will be induced to resort to obtain new lights in 
 their profession. The books and plans of in- 
 struction, which have been tried and found to 
 answer at the Zillah seminaries, will be introduced 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 173 
 
 into the Purgunnah and village schools. In short, 
 the means of every description for establishing a 
 system of national instruction, will be accumu- 
 lated at these central points; and our future 
 operations are likely to be unembarrassed and effi- 
 cacious in proportion as this foundation is well 
 and securely laid. We have, at present, only to 
 do with outlines, but they should be drawn with 
 a strict reference to the details which will here- 
 after have to be filled in. 
 
 A great deal has been said about the importance 
 of preparing books in the vernacular languages ; 
 and it has been even urged as a proof that there 
 is something unsound in our plan of operations, 
 that there is a greater demand for English books 
 than for books in the vernacular languages.* This 
 objection seems to me to arise from a disposition 
 to anticipate the natural course of events. There 
 
 * It appears from the following contrasted statement, taken 
 from the two last biennial reports of the School-book Society, 
 that the demand for books in the vernacular languages is in- 
 creasing, although not as yet in so great a degree as that for 
 English books: 
 
 1832 and 1833. 1834 and 1835. 
 Hindusthanee - - 1,077 - 3,384 
 Hinduee - - - 1,514 - 4,171 
 Bengalee ... 4,896 - 5,754 
 Orissa ... 815 - 834 
 
 7,302 14,143 
 
 i 3 
 
174 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 is at present only a limited demand for books in 
 the vernacular languages. But what is the remedy 
 proposed ? To print more books. To print more 
 books than are wanted, because they are not 
 wanted ! This scheme, though in appearance 
 more popular, would be, in reality, just as useless 
 as that of the Arabic translations : the books would 
 rot on the shelves ; and, as they would not be 
 read, nothing would be gained by their being in a 
 known, instead of an unknown, tongue. The 
 chance that anything worth reading will be pro- 
 duced by salaried translators, who are certain of 
 being paid whether their books are good or bad, 
 is also very small indeed. If such a plan were to 
 answer in any degree, it would be likely to do so 
 at the expense of pitching the national taste at the 
 outset at a very low standard. 
 
 In order to create a vernacular literature, we 
 must begin by creating a demand for one. The 
 adoption of the vernacular language, as the lan- 
 guage of public business, will contribute more to- 
 wards the formation of a vernacular literature than 
 if the Government were to spend a crore of rupees 
 in translating and printing books. It will have 
 the same effect as the substitution of English for 
 Norman-French in legal proceedings, and for 
 Latin in the exercises of religion had in England. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 175 
 
 We must also give a liberal English education to 
 the middle and upper classes, in order that we 
 may furnish them with both the materials and the 
 models for the formation of a national literature. 
 In this way, the demand, and the means of supply- 
 ing the demand, will grow up together. The class 
 of people who, without knowing English, require 
 some mental aliment, will become more and more 
 extensive : the class who do know English, will 
 be more and more induced by pecuniary interest, 
 by ambition, by the desire of doing good, to sup- 
 ply this aliment. Out of their fulness, from minds 
 saturated with English knowledge and tastes 
 formed by the study of English masterpieces, 
 they will produce, not dull translations, but ori- 
 ginal works, suited to the intellectual habits of their 
 countrymen. Mediocrity will meet with no encou- 
 ragement. Out of many attempts, few will succeed ; 
 but those few will lay the foundation of the men- 
 tal independence of India, and will oblige even 
 those who know English to regard their own lite- 
 rature with respect, and to consider it as worthy 
 of cultivation for its own sake. 
 
 Latin was formerly upheld as the only proper 
 
 medium for scientific and literary composition. 
 
 Petrarch expected to be known to posterity by 
 
 his Latin poems, which nobody now reads : and of 
 
 i 4 
 
176 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 all Bacon's works, his Essays, which he wrote In 
 English as an amusement for his leisure hours, 
 are alone in everybody's hands ; but, notwith- 
 standing this, the modern European literature 
 will be found to have taken its great start at 
 the time when the cultivation of the classical lan- 
 guages was at its height. To check the study 
 of Latin at that period would have been to 
 check the progress of knowledge, of taste, and of 
 curiosity, which, descending lower and lower, at 
 last gave rise to the admirable literature of the 
 West. To check the study of English, in order 
 to force that of the vernacular language, would 
 have an equally bad effect upon the nascent lite- 
 rature of India. It would retard the process of 
 national improvement by a fruitless endeavour 
 to have that first, which ought, in the natural 
 course of things, to come last: it would have 
 the same effect on the increase of knowledge 
 which the mistaken policy of some nations has on 
 the increase of wealth, who, impatient to have ma- 
 nufactures before they come in their own time, 
 divert a portion of their capital from the more pro- 
 fitable employment of agriculture to the less pro- 
 fitable one of manufactures. 
 
 There is, however, one mode in which the 
 Government may, without running any risk of en- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 177 
 
 couraging mediocrity, give direct aid to the growth 
 of a national literature. The consumption of 
 books in the native languages, in the Government 
 schools, is already great, and is daily increasing as 
 the schools become more numerous and better 
 billed. The adoption of any book as a class-book 
 in the Government seminaries also establishes its 
 reputation, and creates a general demand for it. 
 Here then is a certain and perfectly unobjection- 
 able mode of encouraging the production of good 
 books : only the best books of each kind are 
 bought, and they are bought only as they are 
 actually wanted ; the pupils themselves pay for 
 them, and a large number of useful books thus 
 annually pass into the hands of the people. When 
 particular books are required for the use of the 
 Government schools, it would be advisable to make 
 the want publicly known, in order that all native 
 authors may have an opportunity of supplying it. 
 The best among many competitors is likely to pro- 
 duce something better worth having than any 
 single writer who could be selected. 
 
 A good law of copyright, embracing the whole 
 of British India, would now be of great use. The 
 want has only lately begun to be felt. Nothing 
 was to be made by works in manuscript; and 
 printed books were not in sufficient demand to 
 i 5 
 
178 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 make the copyright of any value. Now, however, 
 large editions of many works, both in English and 
 the vernacular languages, are called for ; and anxiety 
 is felt by publishers on account of their liability to 
 be deprived of their profits by piratical editions. 
 
 Although my remarks have been particularly 
 directed to the state of things in the Bengal and 
 Agra presidencies, they are, for the most part, 
 equally applicable to the rest of British India. 
 The plan which has been found to be best adapted 
 for enlightening the people in Bengal, is not likely 
 to be less efficacious at Madras and Bombay. 
 Those presidencies will suffer less by the start 
 of a few years, which Bengal has had, than they 
 will gain by being placed in possession of a well 
 devised and well tested plan of proceeding, with- 
 out having had any of the trouble or expense of 
 making the experiment. 
 
 At Madras, where least has been done for native 
 education, there are, perhaps, more abundant 
 materials and fewer obstacles than in any of the 
 other presidencies. Native learning is even more 
 thinly spread than in Bengal, and no institutions 
 have been established by us to confirm its hold 
 upon the country. On the other hand, a colloquial 
 knowledge of English is a much more common 
 acquirement than it is in Bengal. There are seve- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 179 
 
 ral different languages spoken in the Madras pre- 
 sidency, and English has been to a great extent 
 adopted as the common medium of intercourse, 
 not only between Europeans and natives, but be- 
 tween the natives themselves. This circumstance 
 must give a permanent impulse to the study of the 
 language, and will probably lead to its being more 
 commonly used in ordinary conversation, and more 
 largely diffused through the native languages in 
 the south of India than in any other part of our 
 Eastern dominions. The rough materials of a 
 system of national education are therefore ready 
 to hand in the Madras presidency ; and all we have 
 to do is to organise them, and apply them to their 
 proper purpose. English is no novelty ; it is in 
 great request; thousands already know it: but 
 it has hitherto been taught loosely and unsystema- 
 tically, and we must bring all the modern improve- 
 ments in education to the aid of its easy and correct 
 acquisition. It has hitherto been taught merely 
 to the extent necessary for carrying on colloquial 
 intercourse; but we must enable our subjects to 
 cultivate it as the means of obtaining access to all 
 the knowledge of Europe. 
 
 At Bombay more has been done for native edu- 
 cation. At first, too exclusive attention was paid 
 to the vernacular languages ; books for which there 
 i 6 
 
180 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 was no demand, were translated at a heavy ex- 
 pense ; and as the vernacular language only was 
 taught in the schools, a fixed and narrow limit 
 was placed to the acquisitions of the pupils. This 
 plan has since been modified ; and, while proper 
 attention is still paid to the vernacular language, 
 English is also extensively cultivated : the taste 
 for it is said to be rapidly increasing ; and as 
 the youth of the Bombay Presidency have every 
 thing at their disposal which the English language 
 contains, they have now an open career before 
 them. 
 
 It is a striking confirmation of the soundness 
 of the prevailing plan of education, that the Ben- 
 gal and Bombay Presidencies, although they set 
 out from opposite quarters, and preserved no con- 
 cert with each other, settled at last on exactly the 
 same point. In Bengal we began by giving almost 
 exclusive attention to the native classical lan- 
 guages, as they did in Bombay to the vernacular 
 languages ; and in both cases experience has led to 
 a conviction of the value of English, and to its 
 having had that prominent place accorded to it 
 which its importance demands. It is time that these 
 partial efforts should give place to a general plan, 
 embracing the whole of British India. The con- 
 stitution given to it by the late charter has es- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 181 
 
 tablishcd the identity of our Indian empire, and 
 the Government has since been occupied in remo- 
 delling the different departments of administration 
 on this principle. All the provinces of this empire 
 are to have the same criminal and civil law, the 
 same post-office and commercial regulations; and 
 it is surely not of less importance that they should 
 have the same system of public instruction. Our 
 subjects have set out on a new career of improve- 
 ment : they are about to have a new character 
 imprinted on them. That this national movement 
 should be taken under the guidance of the State, 
 that the means at our disposal should be equally 
 distributed, that each province should profit by 
 the experience of all the rest, that there should 
 be one power to regulate, to control, to urge the 
 indolent, to restrain the over-zealous, to lead on 
 the people by the same or corresponding means 
 to the same point of improvement, will hardly 
 be denied to be as conducive to the welfare of 
 our subjects as it will be to the popularity and 
 permanency of our dominion over them. 
 
 The Bengal Education Committee was bound 
 to keep a single eye to the enlightenment of the 
 people, that being the object for which they had 
 been associated as a public body, and for which 
 the administration of a portion of the reve- 
 
182 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 nue had been committed to their hands. The 
 general interests of science formed no part of 
 their public charge, but it must not be supposed 
 that they were on that account personally indif- 
 ferent to them. No men are more disposed than 
 the members of the Education Committee to ad- 
 mire the exertions of James Prinsep, of Hodgson, 
 of Turner, of Masson, or are more anxious to 
 contribute to their success in any way that does 
 not involve a sacrifice of public duty. The gen- 
 tlemen whom I have named, and others who are 
 associated with them, are turning the ancient 
 Arabic and Sanskrit records to their proper ac- 
 count. Owing to the vastly superior means now at 
 our disposal, they are worse than useless, considered 
 as a basis of popular education ; but as a medium 
 for investigating the history of the country, and 
 the progress of mind and manners during so many 
 ages, they are highly deserving of being studied and 
 preserved. These two objects have no more to do 
 with each other than the Royal Society has with 
 Mr. Wyse's Committee on National Education, or 
 the societies for Preserving Welch and Gaelic Lite- 
 rature, with the British and Foreign School Society. 
 By joining them in a forced and unnatural union 
 the progress of both has been retarded. Philo- 
 logical and antiquarian research was supported on 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 183 
 
 the resources of education. Education was con- 
 ducted in a way more adapted for the lecture-room 
 of a German university, than for the enlighten- 
 ment of benighted Asiatics. The .friends of edu- 
 cation, in performing the indispensable duty of 
 recovering the sum which had been assigned by 
 the state for their object, were very unwillingly 
 placed in a state of apparent opposition to the 
 interests of oriental research. The more imme- 
 diate supporters of the Asiatic Society, in strug- 
 gling to retain the interest they had enjoyed in 
 this sum, were marshalled against the cause of 
 popular education. Since the separation has been 
 effected, both parties have pursued their respective 
 objects with much greater success than before. 
 The Education Committee, uninfluenced by any 
 foreign bias, has employed all its disposable funds 
 in founding new seminaries. The Asiatic Society, 
 forced at last to lean on its natural supporters, 
 has been liberally assisted by private contributions; 
 and will, it may be hoped, soon receive that aid 
 from the public resources to which the public 
 importance of its labours so justly entitle it. 
 
 It is much to be desired that this division of 
 labour between the departments of general science 
 and popular education should receive the sanction 
 of the highest authority, and be carried into full 
 
184 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 effect. The plan which appears to me best calcu- 
 lated to answer every purpose, , for the Govern- 
 ment to attach a Sanskrit professor, with several 
 native assistants, to the establishment of the Asiatic 
 Society. These persons, selected on account of 
 their eminent attainments and known love of science, 
 and undisturbed by any other pursuit, might de- 
 vote themselves to the investigation of the history, 
 antiquities, philosophy, and literature of the East, 
 recording the result of their researches in the most 
 lasting and available forms. India is undoubtedly 
 at the threshold of a new era; and it seems to be 
 no less incumbent on us at this period to gather 
 up the recollections of the past, than to provide 
 matter of national improvement for the future. 
 The Hindu system of learning has formed the 
 character of the people up to the present point ; 
 and it must still be studied, to account for daily 
 occurring phenomena of habits and manners. 
 Whatever mental cultivation, whatever " taste 
 for scientific and literary pursuits has survived 
 among the Hindus, is owing to it : they were a 
 literary people when we were barbarians ; and, 
 after centuries of revolution, and anarchy, and 
 subjection to foreign rule, they are still a literary 
 people, now that we have arrived at the highest 
 existing point of civilisation. That the system 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 185 
 
 which has produced these effects should be care- 
 fully analysed and recorded in all its different 
 parts, is no less required by the interests of science 
 in general than by our particular interest as rulers 
 of India. The pundits and students of the San- 
 skrit College, whose whole time is taken up in 
 teaching and learning that language, are quite 
 unequal to the task. The Asiatic Society, whose 
 proper business it is, are also at present unequal 
 to it; they have no machinery for its perform- 
 ance : the members of the society are principally 
 public officers, overburdened with other duties; 
 and they have as yet been obliged to confine their 
 attention to the replenishment of their museum, 
 and the collection of such scattered notices of the 
 antiquities of the country as have been sent to them 
 by amateur correspondents. The examining and 
 laying open of the different branches of Hindu and 
 Mahommedan literature, has been of necessity, 
 almost entirely neglected; and unless some plan 
 be adopted such as I have suggested, it is not 
 easy to see how this object (the one for which the 
 society was principally founded), can ever be ac- 
 complished. Such Arabic and Sanskrit works 
 as are worthy of being preserved, might be printed 
 under the superintendence of the professor and his 
 native assistants ; and the expense might be borne. 
 
186 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 as hitherto, partly by subscription, and partly by 
 the sale of the works themselves, without much 
 assistance from Government. What the finances 
 of the society are not equal to, is, the payment of 
 salaries sufficient to secure the whole time of highly 
 qualified persons to review and make researches 
 into the ancient literature of the country. 
 
 Having made this provision for the preserva- 
 tion of Arabic and Sanskrit learning, and satis- 
 fied every reasonable wish which either national 
 pride or scientific curiosity can suggest, we shall 
 be able with more satisfaction to take the requi- 
 site steps for the introduction of new knowledge, 
 and the creation of a new literature. Every ob- 
 ject will have been secured, and all parties will 
 pursue their respective ends without interfering, 
 and will co-operate without misunderstanding. 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 187 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 The Political Tendency of the different Systems of 
 Education in use in India. 
 
 THERE can be no dispute as to what our duty as , 
 the rulers of India requires us to do. But it has 
 been said, and may be said again, that whatever 
 our duty may be, it is not our policy to enlighten 
 the natives of India ; that the sooner they grow 
 to man's estate, the sooner they will be able to do 
 without us; and that by giving them knowledge, 
 we are giving them power, of which they will make 
 the first use against ourselves. 
 
 If our interest and our duty were really opposed 
 to each other, every good man, every honest Eng- 
 lishman, would know which to prefer. Our na- 
 tional experience has given us too deep a sense of 
 the true ends of government, to allow us to think 
 of carrying on the administration of India except 
 for the benefit of the people of India. A nation 
 which made so great a sacrifice to redeem a few 
 hundred thousand negroes from slavery, would 
 shudder at the idea of keeping a hundred millions 
 of Indians in the bondage of ignorance, with all 
 
188 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 its frightful consequences, by means of a political 
 system supported by the revenue taken from the 
 Indians themselves. Whether we govern India 
 ten or a thousand years, we will do our duty by 
 it : we will look, not to the probable duration of 
 our trust, but to the satisfactory discharge of it, 
 so long as it shall please God to continue it to us. 
 Happily, however, we are not on this occasion 
 called upon to make any effort of disinterested 
 magnanimity. Interest and duty are never really 
 separated in the affairs of nations, any more than 
 they are in those of individuals ; and in this case 
 they are indissolubly united, as a very slight ex- 
 amination will suffice to show. 
 
 The Arabian or Mahommedan system is based 
 on the exercise of power and the indulgence of 
 passion. Pride, ambition, the love of rule, and of 
 sensual enjoyment, are called in to the aid of re- 
 ligion. The earth is the inheritance of the Faith- 
 ful : all besides are infidel usurpers, with whom 
 no measures are to be kept, except what policy 
 may require. Universal dominion belongs to the 
 Mahommedans by Divine right. Their religion 
 obliges them to establish their predominance by the 
 sword ; and those who refuse to conform are to be 
 kept in a state of slavish subjection. The Hindu 
 system, although less fierce and aggressive than 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 189 
 
 the Mahommedan, is still more exclusive: all 
 who are not Hindus are impure outcasts, fit only 
 for the most degraded employments; and, of course, 
 utterly disqualified for the duties of government, 
 which are reserved for the military, under the 
 guidance of the priestly caste. Such is the politi- 
 cal tendency of the Arabic and Sanskrit systems 
 of learning. Happily for us, these principles exist 
 in their full force only in books written in diffi- 
 cult languages, and in the minds of a few learned 
 men; and they are very faintly reflected in the 
 feelings and opinions of the body of the people. 
 But what will be thought of that plan of national 
 education which would revive them and make 
 them popular; would be perpetually reminding 
 the Mahommedans that we are infidel usurpers of 
 some of the fairest realms of the Faithful, and the 
 Hindus, that we are unclean beasts, with whom 
 it is a sin and a shame to have any friendly inter- 
 course. Our bitterest enemies could not desire 
 more than that we should propagate systems of 
 learning which excite the strongest feelings of 
 human nature against ourselves. 
 
 The spirit of English literature, on the other 
 hand, cannot but be favorable to the English con- 
 nection. Familiarly acquainted with us by means 
 of our literature, the Indian youth almost cease to 
 
190 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 regard us as foreigners. They speak of our great 
 men with the same enthusiasm as we do. Edu- 
 cated in the same way, interested in the same ob- 
 jects, engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, 
 they become more English than Hindus, just as 
 the Roman provincials became more Romans than 
 Gauls or Italians. What is it that makes us what 
 we are, except living and conversing with English 
 people, and imbibing English thoughts and habits 
 of mind ? They do so too : they daily converse 
 with the best and wisest Englishmen through the 
 medium of their works; and form, perhaps, a 
 higher idea of our nation than if their intercourse 
 with it were of a more personal kind. Admitted 
 behind the scenes, they become acquainted with 
 the principles which guide our proceedings ; they 
 see how sincerely we study the benefit of India in 
 the measures of our administration ; and from vio- 
 lent opponents, or sullen conformists, they are 
 converted into zealous and intelligent co-operators 
 with us. They learn to make a proper use of the 
 freedom of discussion which exists under our go- 
 vernment, by observing how we use it ourselves; 
 and they cease to think of violent remedies, be- 
 cause they are convinced that there is no indis- 
 position on our part to satisfy every real want of 
 the country. Dishonest and bad rulers alone de- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 191 
 
 rive any advantage from the ignorance of their 
 subjects. As long as we study the benefit of 
 India in our measures, the confidence and affec- 
 tion of the people will increase in proportion to 
 their knowledge of us. 
 
 But this is not all. There is a principle in 
 human nature which impels all mankind to aim at 
 improving their condition : every individual has 
 his plan of happiness : every community has its 
 ideas of securing the national honour and pros- 
 perity. This powerful and universal principle, in 
 some shape or other, is in a state of constant 
 activity; and if it be not enlisted on our side, it must 
 be arrayed against us. As long as the natives 
 are left to brood over their former independence, 
 their sole specific for improving their condition is, 
 the immediate and total expulsion of the English. 
 A native patriot of the old school has no notion of 
 any thing beyond this : his attention has never 
 been called to any other mode of restoring the 
 dignity and prosperity of his country. It is only 
 by the infusion of European ideas, that a new di- 
 rection can be given to the national views. The 
 young men, brought up at our seminaries, turn 
 with contempt from the barbarous despotisms 
 under which their ancestors groaned, to the pros- 
 pect of improving their national institutions on 
 
192 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the English model. Instead of regarding us with 
 dislike, they court our society, and look upon us 
 as their natural protectors and benefactors : the 
 summit of their ambition is, to resemble us ; and, 
 under our auspices, they hope to elevate the cha- 
 racter of their countrymen, and to prepare them 
 by gradual steps for the enjoyment of a well- 
 regulated and therefore a secure and a happy 
 independence. So far from having the idea of 
 driving the English into the sea uppermost in 
 their minds, they have no notion of any improve- 
 ment but such as rivets their connection with the 
 English, and makes them dependent on English 
 protection and instruction. In the re-establish- 
 ment of the old native governments they see only 
 the destruction of their most cherished hopes, and 
 a state of great personal insecurity for themselves. 
 The existing connection between two such dis- 
 tant countries as England and India, cannot, in 
 the nature of things, be permanent : no effort of 
 policy can prevent the natives from ultimately 
 regaining their independence. But there are two 
 ways of arriving at this point. One of these is, 
 through the medium of revolution ; the other, 
 through that of reform. In one, the forward 
 movement is sudden and violent ; in the other, it 
 is gradual and peaceable. One must end in a 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 193 
 
 complete alienation of mind and separation of 
 interests between ourselves and the natives ; the 
 other in a permanent alliance, founded on mutual 
 benefit and good-will. 
 
 The only means at our disposal for preventing 
 the one and securing the other class of results is, 
 to set the natives on a process of European im- 
 provement, to which they are already sufficiently 
 inclined. They will then cease to desire and aim 
 at independence on the old Indian footing. A 
 sudden change will then be impossible ; and a long 
 continuance of our present connection with India 
 will even be assured to us. A Mahratta or 
 Mahommedan despotism might be re-established 
 in a month ; but a century would scarcely suffice 
 to prepare the people for self-government on the 
 European model. The political education of a 
 nation must be a work of time ; and while it is in 
 progress, we shall be as safe as it will be possible 
 for us to be. The natives will not rise against us, 
 because we shall stoop to raise them : there will be 
 no reaction, because there will be no pressure : the 
 national activity will be fully and harmlessly em- 
 ployed in acquiring and diffusing European know- 
 ledge, and in naturalising European institutions. 
 The educated classes, knowing that the elevation 
 of their country on these principles can only be 
 
194 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 worked out under our protection, will naturally 
 cling to us. They even now do so. There is no 
 class of our subjects to whom we are so thoroughly 
 necessary as those whose opinions have been cast 
 in the English mould : they are spoiled for a 
 purely native regime ; they have every thing to fear 
 from the premature establishment of a native 
 government ; their education would mark them 
 out for persecution : the feelings of independ- 
 ence, the literary and scientific pursuits, the 
 plans of improvement in which they indulged un- 
 der our government, must be exchanged for the 
 servility and prostration of mind which character- 
 ise an Asiatic court. This class is at present a 
 small minority, but it is continually receiving ac- 
 cessions from the youth who are brought up at the 
 different English seminaries. It will in time be- 
 come the majority ; and it will then be necessary 
 to modify the political institutions to suit the 
 increased intelligence of the people, and their ca- 
 pacity for self-government. 
 
 The change will thus be peaceably and gradu- 
 ally effected : there will be no struggle, no 
 mutual exasperation; the natives will have in- 
 dependence, after first learning how to make a 
 good use of it : we shall exchange profitable sub- 
 jects for still more profitable allies. The present 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 195 
 
 administrative connection benefits families, but a 
 strict commercial union between the first manu- 
 facturing and the first producing country in the 
 world, would be a solid foundation of strength 
 and prosperity to our whole nation. If this course 
 be adopted, there will, properly speaking, be no 
 separation. A precarious and temporary relation 
 will almost imperceptibly pass into another far 
 more durable and beneficial. Trained by us to 
 happiness and independence, and endowed with 
 our learning and our political institutions, India 
 will remain the proudest monument of British 
 benevolence; and we shall long continue to reap, 
 in the affectionate attachment of the people, and in 
 a great commercial intercourse with their splendid 
 country,* the fruit of that liberal and enlight- 
 ened policy which suggested to us this line of 
 conduct. 
 
 In following this course we should be trying no 
 new experiment. The Romans at once civilised 
 
 * The present trade with India can give no idea of what it is 
 capable of becoming : the productive powers of the country are 
 immense : the population of British India alone, without in- 
 cluding the native States, is more than three times that of all the 
 rest of the British Empire. By governing well, and promoting 
 to the utmost of our power the growth of wealth, intelligence, and 
 enterprise in its vast population, we shall be able to make India 
 a source of wealth and strength to our nation in time to come* 
 with which nothing in our past history furnishes any parallel. 
 K 2 
 
196 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the nations of Europe, and attached them to their 
 rule by Romanising them ; or, in other words, by 
 educating them in the Roman literature and arts, 
 and teaching them to emulate their conquerors in- 
 stead of opposing them. Acquisitions made by 
 superiority in war, were consolidated by superio- 
 rity in the arts of peace ; and the remembrance of 
 the original violence was lost in that of the bene- 
 fits which resulted from it. The provincials of 
 Italy, Spain, Africa, and Gaul, having no ambi- 
 tion except to imitate the Romans, and to share 
 their privileges with them, remained to the last 
 faithful subjects of the empire; and the union was 
 at last dissolved, not by internal revolt, but by the 
 shock of external violence, which involved con- 
 querors and conquered in one common overthrow. 
 The Indians will, I hope, soon stand in the same 
 position towards ns in which we once stood towards 
 the Romans. Tacitus informs us, that it was the 
 policy of Julius Agricola to instruct the sons of 
 the leading men among the Britons in the litera- 
 ture and science of Rome, and to give them a taste 
 for the refinements of Roman civilisation.* We 
 
 * The words of Tacitus are, " Jam vero principum filios lihera- 
 libus artibus crudire, et ingenia Britannorum studiis Galloriun an- 
 tcferrc, ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam 
 concupiscerent. Inde etiam habitus nostri honor et frcqucns toga. 
 Paulati tuque discessum ad delinimenta vitiorum, porticus ct bal- 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 197 
 
 all know how well this plan answered. From being 
 obstinate enemies, the Britons soon became attached 
 and confiding friends ; and they made more stre- 
 nuous efforts to retain the Romans, than their an- 
 cestors had done to resist their invasion. It will 
 be a shame to us if, with our greatly superior 
 advantages, we also do not make our premature de- 
 parture be dreaded as a calamity. It must not be 
 said in after ages, that " the groans of the Britons" 
 were elicited by the breaking up of the Roman 
 empire; and the groans of the Indians by the con- 
 tinued existence of the British. 
 
 We may also take a lesson from the Mahomme- 
 tans, whose conquests have been so extensive and 
 so permanent. From the Indian Archipelago to 
 Portugal, Arabic was established as the language 
 of religion, of literature, and of law ; the vernacu- 
 lar tongues were saturated with it ; and the youth 
 of the conquered countries soon began to vie with 
 their first instructors in every branch of Mahom- 
 medari learning. A polite education was under- 
 stood to mean a Mahommedan education; and the 
 most cultivated and active minds were every where 
 engaged on the side of the Mahommedan system. 
 
 nea et conviviorum elegantiam ; idque apud imperitos humanitas 
 vocabatur cum pars servitutis esset." 
 
 K 3 
 
198 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 The Emperor Akbar followed up this policy in India, 
 Arabicised Persian was adopted as the language of 
 his dynasty ; and the direction thereby given to the 
 national sympathies and ideas greatly contributed 
 to produce that feeling of veneration for the 
 family which has long survived the loss of its 
 power. This feeling, which in Europe would be 
 called loyalty, is common to those who have been 
 brought up in the old learning, but is very rarely 
 found in connection with an English education. 
 The policy of our predecessors, although seldom 
 worthy of imitation, was both very sound and very 
 successful in this respect. If we adopt the same 
 policy, it will be more beneficial to the natives in 
 proportion as English contains a greater fund of 
 true knowledge than Arabic and Persian : and it 
 will be more beneficial to us in proportion as the 
 natives will study English more zealously and ex- 
 tensively than they did Arabic and Persian, and 
 will be more completely changed by it in feeling 
 and opinion. 
 
 These views were not worked out by reflection, 
 but were forced on me by actual observation and 
 experience. I passed some years in parts of India, 
 where, owing to the comparative novelty of our 
 rule and to the absence of any attempt to alter the 
 current of native feeling, the national habits of 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 199 
 
 thinking remained unchanged. There, high and 
 low, rich and poor, had only one idea of improving 
 their political condition. The upper classes lived 
 upon the prospect of regaining their former pre- 
 eminence ; and the lower, upon that of having the 
 avenues to wealth and distinction re-opened to them 
 by the re-establishment of a native government. 
 Even sensible and comparatively well affected na- 
 tives had no notion that there was any remedy for 
 the existing depressed state of their nation except 
 the sudden and absolute expulsion of the English. 
 After that, I resided for some years in Bengal, and 
 there I found quite another set of ideas prevalent 
 among the educated natives. Instead of thinking 
 of cutting the throats of the English, they were 
 aspiring to sit with them on the grand jury or on 
 the bench of magistrates. Instead of speculating 
 on Punjab or Nepaulese politics, they were dis- 
 cussing the advantages of printing and free discus- 
 sion, in oratorical English speeches, at debating 
 societies which they had established among them- 
 selves. The most sanguine dimly looked forward 
 in the distant future to the establishment of a 
 national representative assembly as the consum- 
 mation of their hopes all of them being fully 
 sensible that these plans of improvement could 
 only be worked out with the aid and protection of 
 K 4 
 
200 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the British Government by the gradual improve- 
 ment of their countrymen in knowledge and 
 morality ; and that the re-establishment of a Ma- 
 hommedan or any other native regime would at once 
 render all such views impracticable and ridiculous. 
 No doubt, both these schemes of national im- 
 provement suppose the termination of the English 
 rule : but while that event is the beginning of 
 one, it is only the conclusion of the other. In one, 
 the sudden and violent overthrow of our govern- 
 ment is a necessary preliminary : in the other, a 
 long continuance of our administration, and the 
 gradual withdrawal of it as the people become fit 
 to govern themselves, are equally indispensable. 
 
 Our native army is justly regarded as the pillar 
 of our Indian empire; and no plan of benefiting 
 either the natives or ourselves can be worth any- 
 thing which does not rest on the supposition that 
 this pillar will remain unbroken. It is therefore 
 of importance to inquire how this essential ele- 
 ment of power is likely to be affected by the 
 course of policy which has been described. The 
 Indian army is made up of two entirely distinct 
 parts ; the English officers, and the native officers 
 and men. The former will, under any circum- 
 stances, stand firm to their national interests: 
 the latter will be animated by the feelings of the 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 201 
 
 class of society from which they are drawn, except 
 so far as those feelings may be modified by pro- 
 fessional interests and habits. The native officers 
 rise from the ranks ; and the ranks are recruited 
 from the labouring class, which is the last that 
 will be affected by any system of national edu- 
 cation. Not one in five hundred of the boys 
 who are instructed in the Zillah seminaries, will 
 enlist in the army. If the Sepoys are educated 
 anywhere, it must be in the village schools; and 
 the organisation of those schools will be the con- 
 cluding measure of the series. The instruction 
 given to the labouring class can never be more 
 than merely elementary. They have not leisure 
 for more. But, such as it is, they will be indebted 
 for it to us ; and as it will form part of a system 
 established and superintended by ourselves, we 
 shall take care that it is of a kind calculated to in- 
 spire feelings of attachment to the British connec- 
 tion. After this, the young men who enlist in the 
 army will become imbued with the military spirit, 
 and moulded by the habits of military obedience. 
 I leave to others to judge whether this training is 
 calculated to make better and more attached, or 
 worse and more disaffected, soldiers than the state 
 of entire neglect, as regards their moral and in- 
 tellectual improvement, in which the who'e class 
 K 5 
 
202 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 are at present left. I never heard that the edu- 
 cation given in the national schools unfitted the 
 common people of England for the ranks of the 
 army; although the inducements to honourable 
 and faithful service, which are open to them after 
 they enter the army, are much inferior to those 
 which are held out to our Sepoys. 
 
 Religious instruction forms no part of the ob- 
 ject of the Government seminaries. It would be 
 impossible for the State to interfere at all with 
 native education on any other condition ; and this 
 is now so well understood, that religious jealousy 
 offers no obstruction to our success. The general 
 favour with which English education is regarded, 
 and the multitudes who flock to our schools, prove 
 this to be the case. The Brahmins, it is true, 
 ruled supreme over the old system. It was 
 moulded for the express purpose of enabling them 
 to hold the minds of men in thraldom ; and ages 
 had fixed the stamp of solidity upon it. Upon 
 this ground they were unassailable. But popular 
 education, through the medium of the English 
 language, is an entirely new element, with winch 
 they are incapable of dealing. It did not enter 
 into the calculation of the founders of their sys- 
 tem; and they have no machinery to oppose to it. 
 Although they have been priest-ridden for ages, 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 203 
 
 the people of India are, for all purposes of im- 
 provement, a new, and more than a new, people. 
 Their appetite for knowledge has been whetted 
 by their long-compelled fast ; and aware of the 
 superiority of the new learning, they devour it 
 more greedily than they ever would have done 
 Sanskrit lore, even if that lore had not been with- 
 held from them : they bring to the task, vacant 
 minds and excited curiosity, absence of prejudice, 
 and an inextinguishable thirst for information. 
 They cannot return under the dominion of the 
 Brahmins. The spell has been for ever broken. 
 Hinduism is not a religion which will bear examin- 
 ation. It is so entirely destitute of any thing like 
 evidence, and is identified with so many gross 
 immoralities and physical absurdities, that it gives 
 way at once before the light of European science. 
 Mahommedanism is made of tougher materials; 
 yet, even a Mahommedan youth who has received 
 an English education is a very different person 
 from one who has been taught according to the 
 perfect manner of the law of his fathers. As this 
 change advances, India will become quite another 
 country : nothing more will be heard of excit- 
 able religious feelings : priestcraft will no longer 
 be able to work by ignorance: knowledge and 
 power will pass from a dominant caste to the 
 K 6 
 
204 ON THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 people themselves ; the whole nation will co-operate 
 with us in reforming institutions, the possibility 
 of altering which could never have been con- 
 templated if events had taken any other course ; 
 and many causes will concur to introduce a more 
 wholesome state of morals, which, of all the 
 changes that can take place, is the one in which 
 the public welfare is most concerned. 
 
 There has been a time at which each of the 
 other branches of the public service has particu- 
 larly commanded attention. The commercial, 
 the political, the judicial, the revenue departments, 
 have in turn been the subject of special consider- 
 ation ; and decisive steps have been taken to put 
 them on a satisfactory footing. My object will 
 be sufficiently attained if I succeed in producing 
 a conviction that the time has arrived for taking 
 up the question of public instruction in the same 
 spirit, and with the same determination to employ 
 whatever means may be requisite for accomplishing 
 the object in view. The absence of any sensible 
 proof that increased taxation is attended with any 
 proportionate benefit to India, has long been ex- 
 tremely disheartening both to the natives and to 
 the European public officers serving in that coun- 
 try.* The entire abolition of the transit duties, 
 
 * A large proportion of the land in the Bengal and Agra Pre- 
 sidencies is held tax-free; but, although nothing can be more 
 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 205 
 
 and the establishment of an adequate system of 
 public instruction, would furnish this proof, and 
 would excite the warmest gratitude of every body 
 who from any cause feels interested in the welfare 
 of India. The interest of a single million sterling *, 
 in addition to what is already expended, would be 
 sufficient to answer every present purpose as far 
 as education is concerned. Even on the narrow- 
 est view of national interest, a million could not 
 be better invested. It would ensure the moral and 
 intellectual emancipation of the people of India, 
 and would render them at once attached to our 
 rule and worthy of our alliance. 
 
 unreasonable than that persons who benefit by the protection of 
 the Government should contribute nothing to its support, and 
 throw the whole burden on the rest, it is impossible at present to 
 induce the natives to view the subject in this light. Their in- 
 variable answer is, that while it is certain that some will be worse 
 off, they see no reason to suppose that they will themselves be 
 better off if the exempted lands are brought under contribution. 
 
 * The Parliamentary assignment of ten thousand pounds a 
 year still remains to be accounted for to the Committee of 
 public instruction, from July 1813 to May 182!, with compound 
 interest up to the date of payment. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Extract from the Report of the Committee appointed by 
 the Indian Government to inquire into the State of 
 Medical Education. 
 
 AGREEABLY to your Lordship's direction to that effect, we 
 called upon Mr. Tytler to prepare a synopsis ofwhat he con- 
 ceives the pupils at the Institution should be taught in the 
 different branches of medical science. This document, ac- 
 cording to our view of it, does not contain by any means such 
 a comprehensive and improved scheme of education as the 
 circumstances of the case indicate the absolute necessity of. 
 Leaving it entirely out of the question, then, at present, we 
 would very respectfully submit to your Lordship in council 
 our serious opinion, that the best mode of fulfilling the great 
 ends under consideration, is for the state to found a Medi- 
 cal College for the education of natives ; in which the various 
 branches of medical science cultivated in Europe should be 
 taught, and as near as possible on the most approved Euro- 
 pean system ; the basis of which system should be a reading 
 and writing knowledge on the part of candidate pupils of the 
 English language, and the like knowledge of Hindustanee or 
 Bengallee, and a knowledge of arithmetic ; inclusive, of 
 course, of proper qualifications as to health, age, and re- 
 spectability of conduct. The Government might select from 
 the various young men, who should pass the final examina- 
 tion, the most distinguished and deserving, for filling up va- 
 
208 APPENDIX. 
 
 cancies as sub-assistant surgeons. A knowledge of the Eng- 
 lish language, we consider as a sine qua non, because that 
 language combines within itself the circle of all the sciences, 
 and incalculable wealth of printed works and illustrations ; 
 circumstances that give it obvious advantages over the ori- 
 ental languages, in which are only to be found the crudest 
 elements of science, or the most irrational substitutes for it. 
 Of the perfect feasibility of such a proposal, we do not 
 entertain a doubt : nevertheless, like any other, it will be 
 found to divide the opinions of men of talent and experience. 
 These will divide into an Oriental and an English party. 
 Mr. Tytler's long replies have imposed upon us the neces- 
 sity of entering at greater length into the argument respect- 
 ing the feasibility of the contemplated plan, than we could 
 have wished. We beg to apologise to your Lordship for 
 this circumstance, but as Mr, Tytler, instead of giving brief 
 and simple answers to our questions, preferred committing 
 them to paper in the form of long minutes ; it became incum- 
 bent upon us to offer something in the way of refutation. 
 The determined Orientalist having himself acquired the 
 Sanscrit and the Arabic, at the cost of much and severe ap- 
 plication, as well as of pecuniary expense, will view witli 
 great repugnance a suggestion of teaching science in such a 
 way as may cast his peculiar pursuits into the shade, and in- 
 dependent of a language which he reveres as classical. The 
 advocate for the substitution of the English language, on 
 the other hand, will doubt whether the whole stores of 
 Eastern literature have enabled us to ascertain a single fact 
 of the least consequence towards the history of the ancient 
 world ; whether they have tended to improve morality, or 
 to extend science ; or whether, with the exception of what 
 the Arabian physicians derived from the Greeks, the Arabic 
 contains a sufficient body of scientific information to reward 
 the modern medical student for all the labour and attention 
 that would be much more profitably bestowed on the study 
 
APPENDIX. 209 
 
 of the English language ; and lastly, whether the modicum 
 of unscientific medical literature contained in the Sanscrit is 
 worth undergoing the eaormous trouble of acquiring that 
 language * 
 
 Unlike the languages of Europe, which are keys to vast 
 intellectual treasures, bountifully to reward the literary 
 inquirer, those of the East, save to a limited extent in poetry 
 and romance, may be said, without exaggeration, to be next 
 to barren. For history and science, then, and all that es- 
 sentially refines and adorns, we must not look to Oriental 
 writers. 
 
 Mr. Tytler has favoured us with his opinions, on the ques- 
 tion under consideration, at great length. The Rev. Mr. Duff, 
 whose experience in instructing native youth is extensive 
 and valuable, has also obliged us with his sentiments on the 
 subject ; which are entirely at issue with those of Mr. Tytler, 
 who takes up the Oriental side of the question with equal 
 ardour and ingenuity. 
 
 Mr. Tytler denies that a system of educating the natives 
 through the medium of English would be in the least more 
 comprehensive, or by any means so much so, as one carried 
 on in the native languages (Mr. Tytler, in that phrase in- 
 cluding Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian) ; and considers it wholly 
 inexpedient as a general measure. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Duff, on the other hand, although acknow- 
 ledging that the native languages, by which we understand 
 the Bengallee in the lower provinces, and the Oordoo in the 
 higher, alone are available for imparting an elementary edu- 
 cation to the mass of the people, affirms that the popular 
 language does not afford an adequate medium for commu- 
 nicating a knowledge of the higher departments of literature, 
 and science, &c. " No original works of the description 
 wanted, " he observes, " have yet appeared in the native 
 languages ; and though much of a highly useful nature has 
 been provided through European talent and perseverance 
 
210 APPENDIX. 
 
 no translations have been made in any degree sufficient to 
 supply materials for the prosecution of the higher object 
 contemplated ; neither is it likely, in the nature of things, that 
 either by original publications, or translations of standard 
 works, the deficiency can be fully or adequately remedied, for 
 such a number of years to come, as may leave the whole of 
 the present generation sleeping with their fathers." (Answer 
 to Question 20, p. 17.) 
 
 Mr. Tytler's reasons for his unfavourable opinion, in regard 
 to the proposed plan, arise, he informs us, partly from the 
 nature of language in general, and partly from the intrinsic 
 difficulty of English itself. The difficulty, it strikes us, is 
 magnified in Mr. Tytler's imagination, and at any rate can 
 scarcely be greater than that of acquiring Arabic and San- 
 scrit, which are about as foreign to the body of the people as 
 English. " A bare knowledge of the English," observes 
 Mr. Tytler, " or of the words for objects, is plainly no in- 
 crease of knowledge, unless it be accompanied with some 
 additional information respecting the objects of which the 
 words are the signs." This is so self-evident a truism, that 
 we are rather surprised Mr. Tytler should deem the stating 
 of it of any use to his argument. The mere capability of 
 uttering the word ojrium, for instance, would be of little use, 
 unless accompanied by a knowledge of the qualities of that 
 drug. It is not with a view to recommend a knowledge of 
 mere words that we troubled Mr. Tytler for his opinion, and 
 have now the honour of addressing your Lordship; but to 
 rescue, if possible, the course of native medical education 
 from this its pervading and crying evil ; for assuredly, 
 nothing, that has yet been made manifest to us tends to show 
 that the pupils of the Institution, under the present system, 
 acquire much beyond mere words ; or to demonstrate, that 
 an acquaintance with Sanscrit and Arabic vocables will give 
 better ideas of things important to be known than English. 
 In fact, to teach English science, English words must be 
 
APPENDIX. 211 
 
 used ; or, in their stead, Arabic and Sanscrit ones must be 
 coined. With the highest opinion of Mr. Tytler's talents, 
 acquirements, and zeal, and the greatest respect for his cha- 
 racter, yet must we not be blinded to a certain degree of 
 partisanship, which unconsciously, we doubt not, has ap- 
 parently warped his otherwise excellent judgment on this 
 question. A discrepancy in his opinions on this subject, 
 however, appears to exist; for he would, to a certain extent, 
 teach the pupils on English principles. If your Lordship 
 will turn to Mr. Tytler's synopsis, it will there be seen, that 
 he proposes to teach the pupils the Latin and English names 
 of the corporeal organs, and of the articles of the materia 
 medica. For this purpose he would instruct them in the 
 English system of spelling and pronunciation, in the declen- 
 sion of Latin nouns, and their rules of concordance. He 
 would, in a word, lead them to the half-way house of English 
 education, and there stop. 
 
 "English" proceeds Mr. Tytler, "is one of the most 
 difficult of all languages, and the most diversified in its ori- 
 gin. It arises from three sources Saxon, Latin, and 
 Norman-French, Its words and idioms vary in accordance 
 with these three. Hence, a correct knowledge of it can be 
 obtained only by a certain degree of knowledge of all the 
 originals." For the attainment of a hypercritical or highly 
 scholastic knowledge, such as is not possessed by one Eng- 
 lishman out of a hundred, Mr. Tytler's position may be 
 readily acceded to. How many thousands are there, how- 
 ever, of Englishmen, persons of ability and intelligence in 
 various walks of active usefulness, who know nothing, or 
 next to nothing, of pure Saxon, Latin, and Norman-French ? 
 Nay, there is reason to suppose that there are not a few 
 skilful and experienced surgeons not better versed in these 
 languages, but who are valuable men in the profession not- 
 withstanding. Will a native sub-assistant surgeon be the less 
 capable of being taught to amputate a limb, because he can- 
 
212 APPENDIX. 
 
 not give the critical etymology of the words knife, limb, cut f 
 Surely the great ends of life are not to stand still for want of 
 knowledge of scholastic roots ? It would be superfluous to 
 point out, in a more elaborate manner, how very overstrained, 
 and inapplicable to general experience, Mr. Tytler's argu- 
 ment is. 
 
 As very apposite to the subject under consideration, we 
 beg to submit an extract or two from a forcible article by 
 the late Dr. Duncan, jun., on Medical Education, which was 
 published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal 
 for 1827. "The knowledge of languages, in itself, derives 
 its chief utility from its facilitating the acquisition of useful 
 knowledge ; and, therefore, as the mind may be nearly 
 equally disciplined during the acquisition of any one language 
 as of any other, their utility is directly proportional to the 
 value of the information contained in the books written in 
 them." Tried by this test, how utterly mispent must be the 
 time devoted by the native medical student to the study of 
 Arabic, Sanscrit, and Persian ! " It is argued," continues 
 the article quoted, " in favour of the study of the Greek 
 language, that it is the language of the fathers of physic ; 
 and that the terms of medical art have been almost all 
 borrowed from it and the Latin ; and that it seems impossi- 
 ble to understand properly their meaning, without possessing 
 some knowledge of the sources from which they have been 
 derived." The first argument would be nearly equally conclu- 
 sive in favour of the Arabic, that physicians might read Avi- 
 ccnna and Rhazes in the original; and with regard to the last, 
 we shall reply, on the authority of Dugald Stewart. " It is in 
 many cases a fortunate circumstance when the words we 
 employ have lost their pedigree, or (what amounts nearly to 
 the same thing,) when it can be traced by those alone who 
 are skilled in ancient and modern languages. Such words 
 have in their favour the sanction of immemorial usage, and 
 
APPENDIX. 213 
 
 the obscurity of their history "prevents them from misleading 
 the imagination, by recalling to it the objects or phenomena 
 to which they owed their origin. The notions, accordingly, 
 we annex to them, may be expected to be peculiarly precise 
 and definite." (Stewart's Phil. Essay, p. 184.) Indeed all at- 
 tempts at descriptive terminology have utterly failed, and have 
 impeded, instead of advancing, the progress of knowledge. 
 " Medicine (observes the same eminent writer, in another 
 place,) is a practical profession. That knowledge is most 
 essential to its students, which renders them the most useful 
 servants of the public ; and all reputation for extrinsic learn- 
 ing (such, for instance, as Sanscrit and Arabic,) which is ac- 
 quired at the expense of practical skill, is meretricious, and 
 deceives the public, by dazzling their judgment." 
 
 Although Mr. Tytler has throughout, unconsciously to 
 himself, we doubt not, overstrained his argument, yet is there 
 one passage which, we are free to confess, trenches on the 
 extravagant. " The great sources of our language," he states, 
 ** must be shown; the Saxon, the Latin, and the French. We 
 must explain what words and what idioms are derived from 
 each, and what changes they have undergone in their pas- 
 sage. Till this be all done, difficult as it may seem, we may 
 by much practice impress upon the natives a sort of jargon, 
 and agree to call it English ; but it will bear scarcely more 
 resemblance to real English than to the dialect of the Hot- 
 tentots." In a word, if we do not make lexicographers of 
 native sub-assistant surgeons, they will not be able to set a 
 fracture, or to prescribe a dose of calomel ; and their Eng- 
 lish remarks or directions, though perfectly intelligible, will 
 amount, in fact, to nothing but a Hottentot jargon ! Need 
 we, in refutation of this exaggerated view, remind your Lord- 
 ship, that there are many respectable native gentlemen in 
 Calcutta, who both speak and write English correctly and 
 fluently ? The works of the late Rammohan Roy were not 
 
*214 APPENDIX. 
 
 written in a Hottentot dialect ; and at this moment there are 
 three newspapers in Calcutta printed in the English language j 
 and yet edited by natives. Why should not other native stu- 
 dents be equally successful with those alluded to? We 
 readily grant that much is to be yet done to render the Eng- 
 lish language more popular in India ; but assuredly the most 
 likely way of effecting this very desirable end, is not to be- 
 stow a premium upon the study of the Arabic, Sanscrit, and 
 Persian, and to close the portal of employment to the Eng- 
 lish student. 
 
 According to Mr. Tytler, it is not only the difficulty of 
 acquiring the English, which is such a formidable obstacle in 
 the way of the learner, but the almost insurmountable one of 
 finding properly qualified English teachers. We beg to refer 
 your lordship to his observations on this head, contenting 
 ourselves with the remark, that if English is not to be taught 
 to native medical students, until such an Utopian selection of 
 schoolmasters as Mr. Tytler indicates be made, then must 
 the English language, and the treasures of scientific know- 
 ledge it contains, belong to them a fountain sealed. 
 
 Mr. Tytler has several elaborate comments on the study 
 of Greek and Latin, the scope of which is to show, that these 
 languages have a greater affinity to the English language, than 
 English has to Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian. The argument 
 is ingenious, but far from conclusive. Latin and Greek, in- 
 deed, were the languages of the learned in Europe, as Ara- 
 bic and Sanscrit are of the learned in India. There the 
 parallel ends. English, however, enjoys an advantage that 
 Latin did not at the epoch alluded to by Mr. Tytler. It 
 is a living language ; it is the language of a great people, 
 many of whom, it may now be expected, will settle in this 
 country ; it is also the language of the governing power. It 
 is not too much to expect that the time is not far distant 
 when English will become much more popular than it is, and 
 
APPENDIX. 215 
 
 when to speak and write it correctly will be deemed a dis- 
 tinguishing privilege. Let English have fair play, and be 
 placed at least upon a par with Sancrit, Arabic, and Persian, 
 and it will become manifest to the most indifferent observer, 
 that the natives study the latter, not because they are the 
 best media for instruction, but because they lead to employ- 
 ment and competency, which the English does not. Perhaps 
 an exception should be stated with reference to the Sanscrit 
 judging from a recent memorial of a number of Hindu youths 
 to the secretary of the sub-committee to the Sanscrit College, 
 representing, that after many years spent in the study of 
 Sancrit, they are in a destitute condition, as they can find 
 neither employment nor consideration among their country- 
 men. 
 
 So long as European literature was confined to Latin, 
 Mr. Tytler estimates the attempts of our ancestors as mere 
 forced imitations of the classics, the far greater part of which 
 are now deservedly forgotten. Supposing the fact to be even 
 as stated, it cuts both ways ; and we may, by a parity of rea- 
 soning, assume, that so long as Eastern literature is confined 
 to Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian, the writings of Indian 
 students will be mere forced imitations of the Sanscrit, Ara- 
 bic, and Persian classics. But Mr. Tytler is a great deal too 
 sweeping in his remarks ; for many of the works of our an- 
 cestors in science, morals, and poetry, that were written in 
 Latin, so far from being forgotten, are held in the highest 
 estimation, even at this day, and are remarkable no less for 
 strength of reasoning than for purity and elegance of expres- 
 sion. We shall be perfectly content if native students should 
 be found to think as justly, and write as beautifully, in English, 
 as Buchanan, Bacon, and various others did in Latin ; or, to 
 come nearer our own times, and in a professional walk, as 
 Harvey, Sydenham, Boerhaave, Haller, Heberden, and Gre- 
 gory did, in the same language. 
 
216 APPENDIX. 
 
 It should be borne in mind, that when Latin was, it may 
 be said, the cradle of science, the English language had not 
 attained th^t fulness and correctness of which it can now 
 legitimately boast. The style of vernacular writers was not 
 formed, being quaint, pedantic, and vitiated ; composition 
 was in its infancy, and there were but few writers. The 
 times, too, were far from favourable to the cultivation of 
 letters. 
 
 To compare English composition as it was in those days, 
 with what it afterwards became, would be to institute a com- 
 parison between a Hindoo figure-maker and Canova. Ever 
 since the Reformation, the English language has been ad- 
 vancing to its present magnificent state of universality, 
 copiousness, and beauty. It would, indeed, be a strange 
 thing, if in our day, when more works are published in a year 
 than were in the olden time printed in half a century, the 
 native youth of India, who may turn to the study of English, 
 should, in defiance of the standard works put into their 
 hands, and in spite of precept and example, follow such pe- 
 dantic and vitiated models as those alluded to by Mr. Tytler. 
 Facts daily occurring around us, demonstrate the ground- 
 lessness of such a fear. 
 
 " As it was in Europe," contends Mr. Tytler, " so it \\\,\ 
 be with the English productions of the natives of India ; they 
 will be a mere patchwork of scntci -ted from the 
 
 few English books with which their authors an- accjuain: 
 Mr. Tytler should at least have sho.vn, that, to produce Mich 
 an effect, the circumstances were preci^-ly the same in the 
 two countries. How he has reached his postulate, he 
 not condescended to say ; nor is it of much importance to 
 know ; for it is, after all, a hypothetical assumption. In re- 
 commending that native medical students should possess a 
 knowledge of English, we are swayed by a hope, not of their 
 writing books, good or bad, but of their thoroughly under- 
 standing and digesting valuable works in that language, com- 
 
APPENDIX. 217 
 
 prising as it does an inestimable body of scientific information; 
 and in progress of time, of their translating them into the 
 vernacular tongues of India, for the benefit of their country- 
 men. We wish them to be able to drink at the fountain- 
 head, instead of depending to allay their mental thirst with 
 driblets of translations, occasionally from the hands of an 
 European. 
 
 But the exclusive study of English, Mr. Tytler deems, 
 will be chargeable with producing an effect which he greatly 
 deprecates. It must necessarily, he thinks, discourage the 
 natives from the cultivation of their own tongues. Were 
 Arabic and Persian their own tongues, there would be some 
 show of reason in the objection ; but when we bear in mind 
 that they are as foreign to the people as English, its validity 
 vanishes at once. To the great body of the people, too, the 
 Sanscrit is in effect quite a foreign language. Of the absorp- 
 tion of that language we need have no fear, so long as it is 
 the interest of the Brahmins to foster it. But if the thing 
 were possible, we are by no means disposed to view the 
 substitution of English for these tongues as a misfortune. 
 As to the objection, that the study of English would put an 
 end to all native composition and indigenous literature ; we 
 would simply inquire, if there is in the world a less edifying 
 and more barren literature than that of Hindoostan, or one 
 that has done less for morality, philosophy, and science ? 
 
 With reference to that imitation of English writers, which 
 Mr. Tytler assumes would beset native students, that gen- 
 tleman quotes with complacency a saying of Johnson, " That 
 no man was ever great by imitation," and amplifies the apoph- 
 thegm so as to comprehend masses of men ; as if the saying 
 stood, that no people ever became great by imitation. The 
 saying thus applied, becomes an untenable sophism ; for, on 
 reflection, we shall find that the converse of the position 
 holds true ; since civilisation itself is nothing else but a com- 
 plex system of imitation. 
 
218 APPENDIX. 
 
 We beg now to call your Lordship's attention to the opi- 
 nions of the Rev. Mr. Duff. In reply to the question, whe- 
 ther, 'in order to teach the principles of any science to native 
 boys, he considered it necessary that they should know San- 
 scrit, Arabic, and Persian ? the reverend gentleman replies, 
 that, " In reference to the acquisition of European science. 
 the study of the languages mentioned would be a sheer waste 
 of labour and time ; since, viewed as a media for receiving and 
 treasuring the stores of modern science, there is, at present, 
 no possible connection between them." On the other hand, 
 in reply to the question, if he thought it possible to teach 
 native boys the principles of any science through the medium 
 of the English language ? He replied, that, " The experience 
 of the last three years has, if possible, confirmed the con- 
 viction he previously entertained, not merely that it is pos- 
 sible to teach native boys the principles of any science 
 through the medium of the English language, but that, in the 
 present incipient state of native improvement, it is next to 
 impossible to teach them successfully the principles of any 
 science through any other medium than the English." He 
 further records his opinion, that the study of the English 
 language might be rendered very popular among the native-. 
 " The sole reason," he justly observes, " why the English is 
 not now more a general and anxious object of acquisition 
 among the natives, is the degree of uncertainty under which 
 they (the natives) still labour as to the ultimate intentions of 
 Government, and whether it will ever lead them into paths 
 of usefulness, profit, or honour; only let the intentions of 
 Government be officially announced, and there will be a 
 general movement among all the more respectable classes." 
 But the teaching of English acquires much importance, when 
 we consider it, with Mr. Duff, as the grand remedy for 
 obviating the prejudices of the natives against practical ana- 
 tomy. " The English language," he urges (Mr.DufTs replies, 
 p. 32.), " opens up a whole world of new ideas, and exan pies 
 
APPENDIX. 219 
 
 of success in every department of science ; and the ideas so 
 true, and the examples so striking, work mightily on the 
 susceptible minds of native youth ; so that by the time they 
 have acquired a mastery over the English language, under 
 judicious and enlightened instructors, their minds are almost 
 metamorphosed into the texture and cast of European youth, 
 and they cannot help expressing their utter contempt for 
 Hindoo superstition and prejudices." 
 
 There is an argument of fact put in by Mr. Duff, which 
 is admirably to the point. We allude to the introduction of 
 the English language and of English science among the 
 Scottish Highlanders, whose native language, to this day, is 
 the Gaelic. The parallel is a very fair one ; for no people were 
 more superstitious, more wedded to their own customs, 
 and more averse to leaving their native country, than the 
 Highlanders : but since the introduction of the English lan- 
 guage among them, the state of things is much changed. The 
 same observation applies to Ireland and Wales, where, as in 
 the Highlands of Scotland, the English is a foreign language ; 
 and yet its acquisition is eagerly sought after by the natives 
 of all these countries, as an almost certain passport to em- 
 ployment. There are medical men, natives of these coun- 
 tries, scattered all o\er the world, whose mother tongue is 
 Welsh, Irish, or Gaelic, which, as children, they spoke for 
 years just as the children of European parents in India 
 speak Hindoostanee and Bengalee ; with this difference, how- 
 ever, that the latter soon forget the Oriental tongues ; while 
 theyouth who acquire the indigenous language of Ireland, the 
 Scottish Highlands, and Wales, never lose the language of 
 those countries, because they do not quit them till a more ad- 
 vanced period of life. For the first years of youth the High- 
 landers at school, even of all ranks, think in the Gaelic ; but 
 this does not prevent their acquiring such a fluent and busi- 
 ness-like knowledge of English, as to enable them to pass 
 through life with credit, and not unfrequently with distinc- 
 
 L 2 
 
220 APPENDIX. 
 
 tion. What is there in the condition, physical or moral, of 
 the natives of this country, that should render them inca- 
 pable of acquiring English as easily as the Irish, the High- 
 landers, and Welsh ? 
 
 (Signed) J. GRANT, ... - President. 
 
 J. C. C- SUTHERLAND," 
 C. E. TREVELYAN, 
 
 THOMAS SPENS, 
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 M. J. BRAMLEY, 
 
 Members. 
 
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 II ijtorkal, Practical, and Descriptive. 
 
 By JOHN FAREY, Engineer. 
 
 4to. illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, and 25 Copperplates, engraved by 
 
 Wilson Lowry, trom Drawings by Messrs, b'arey. 
 
 5/. 68. bds. Vol. II. in in the jet*. 
 
 16 
 
 Lund. ID; Piinud b\ Maniiin^ and Mason, 1\> -lane, St. Paul'.-. 
 
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