whatever merit the individual professors are justly entitled, it
must be evident that the work of education will go on but slowly.
It is even to be feared that it would altogether stop, were it not
for the charity which usually follows considerable reputation as
a teacher.
Students usually commence the study of the Sanskrit
language about twelve years of age, after they have been
instructed in the knowledge taught in the elementary schools.
The principal studies are, as elsewhere in Bengal, grammar, law,
and metaphysics and less frequently the philosophical theology
of the Veds, the ritual of modern Hindooism, and astronomy, to
which may be added medicine or rather magic.
The Vaidyas or medical tribe, and even some rich
Kayasthas, are permitted to study such portions of Sanskrit
literature as have been composed by wise men; but they are
excluded from whatever is supposed to be of divine origin and
authority. Dr Buchanan remarks that the exclusiveness with
which Sanskrit learning has been appropriated to the sacred
tribe may have tended to increase the general ignorance; but
that there can be no doubt that those who possess it enjoy very
considerable advantages over their countrymen. The Brahmans
generally speaking have an intelligence and acuteness far
beyond other Hindoos; and he further thinks that they are
subject to fewer vices, and that those persons will be found to
approach nearest their good qualities who are admitted even to
the porch of science. Here as well as elsewhere it will be found
that although intellectual cultivation and moral excellence are
neither identical nor always concomitant yet the addiction to
intellectual pursuits and enjoyments, coeteries paribus, leads to
the elevation and improvement of the moral character. Amongst
the multiplied means, therefore, which civilisation and
philanthropy will suggest for the reformation of a whole people,
let us not altogether neglect one of which, however unfamiliar it
may be to our conceptions, experience has established the
utility, and which has in fact been the salt of the earth,
preserving the country for centuries past amid general
debasement and corruption from total ignorance and
depravation.
It does not appear that there is any school in which Arabic
or the sciences of the Mahomedans are taught,—a remarkable
fact respecting a populous district in which so large a proportion
of the inhabitants is Mahomedan.
Although some of the Mahomedan priests can read the
portions of the Koran that are appropriated for certain
ceremonies,