question that the number of both amongst Hindoos and
Mussalmans is considerable. This district is a perfect and entire
blank in as far as information regarding the state of indigenous
education is concerned.
NUDDEA: (pp.75-82)
The town of Nuddea was the capital of Hindoo principality
anterior to the Mahommedan conquest, and in more recent
times it has been a seat of Brahmanical learning. Hamilton
remarks that, as a seat of learning, it must have apparently
declined to a very obscure condition, as in 1801 the Judge and
Magistrate, in reply to the Marquis Wellesley’s queries, declared
that he knew not of any seminaries within the district in which
either the Hindoo or Mahomedan law was then taught. This
statement curiously contrasts with the following details, and
affords another illustration of a remark already made, that the
educational institutions of the Hindoos have sometimes been
most strangely overlooked.
The celebrity of Nuddea as a school of Hindoo learning is
wholly unconnected with any notion of peculiar sanctity as in
the case of Benares. Its character as a university was probably
connected with the political importance which belonged to it
about the time of the Mahomedan invasion, as it seems to have
been for a time the capital of Bengal. The princes of Bengal and
the latter rajahs of Nuddea endowed certain teachers with lands
for the instruction and maintenance of scholars, and the support
thus given to pundits and pupils attracted a number of
Brahmans to settle there, and gave a reputation to the district.
The loss of all political consequence and the alleged resumption
of most of the endowments have very much diminished the
attraction of the site, but it still continues a place of learning
and extensive repute.
In 1811, Lord Minto, then Governor-General, proposed to
establish a Hindoo college at Nuddea and another in Tirhoot,
and set apart funds for that purpose. The design, however, was
finally abandoned in favour of that of forming a similar
institution on a larger scale, the present Sanskrit College in
Calcutta. In the course of the correspondence which took place
between government and the Committee of Superintendence
provisionally appointed for the proposed college at Nuddea, the
Committee stated, under date 9th July, 1816, that there were
then in Nuddea 46 schools kept and supported by the most
learned and