that sufficient proof; and so has asked me if I could find any
more acceptable substantiation for that observation. I am,
therefore, addressing you this letter to try and offer that
substantiation, as far as the records available could permit of my
doing so. If you care to acknowledge this letter to Mahatmaji,
would you at the same time send me a copy of the same?
To begin with, I need hardly point out to you that, at the
time under reference, no country in the world had anything like
definite, authoritative, statistical information of the type one
would now recognise as proper proof in such discussions. In
India particularly, thanks to the distracted state of the country,
it was impossible to provide any such material on a nation-wide
basis, even supposing it had been customary to compile such
information from time to time. The elaborate ‘directory’, if I may
so describe it, of the territories under his rule, compiled by the
indefatigable Minister of the great Akbar known as the Ayeen-i-
Akbari, was prepared so long before the advent of the British
that I feel a hesitation even in referring to it, apart from the
further fact that authoritative work suffers from other blemishes
in the eyes of a too critical reader. All, therefore, that one can
expect by way of proof in such matters, and at such a time, can
only be in the form of impressions of people in a position to form
ideas a little better and more scientific than those of less
fortunately situated, or less well endowed, observers. Such
official investigations as were ordered in connection with the
periodical parliamentary enquiries before the renewal of the
Company’s Charter in 1793, 1813, 1833, and 1853 also afford
some data, though these have their own defect as is pointed out
below. Other official enquiries, reports, or obiter dicta of qualified
officers, were originally for a purpose different from the one
under reference here; and, therefore, discussion or observation
on educational matters therein must needs be taken as
incidental rather than as the immediate subject of their concern,
and consequently open to such defects as all such incidental ob-
servation suffers from.
For the immediate purpose of this letter, will you permit me
to begin by referring you to the reports of certain provincial
enquiries conducted about the time when the British rule first
began in those provinces? Let me, however, add a remark as ap-
plied to the country, at large, on the authority of Max Mueller,
and another on the authority of the historian Ludlow,—both
mentioned in Keir Hardie’s work on India. ‘Max Mueller, on the
strength of official documents and missionary reports,