DHARAMPAL • COLLECTED WRITINGS

form and sound of the letters have been taught without regard to
their size and relative proportion; but the master with an iron-
style now writes on the palm-leaf letters of a determinate size
and in due proportion to each other, and the scholar is required
to trace them on the same leaf with a reed-pen and with
charcoal-ink which easily rubs out. This process is repeated over
and over again on the same leaf until the scholar no longer
requires the use of the copy to guide him in the formation of the
letters of a fit size and proportion and he is consequently next
made to write them on another leaf which has no copy to direct
him. He is afterwards exercised in writing and pronouncing the
compound consonants, the syllables formed by the junction of
vowels with consonants, and the most common names of
persons. In other parts of the country, the names of castes,
rivers, mountains, etc., are written as well as of persons; but
here the names of persons only are employed as a school-
exercise. The scholar is then taught to write and read, and by
frequent repetition he commits to memory the Cowrie Table, the
Numeration Table as far as 100, the Katha Table (a land-
measure table), and the Ser Table (a dry-measure table). There
are other tables in use elsewhere which are not taught in the
schools of this district. The third stage of instruction extends
from two to three years which are employed in writing on the
plantain-leaf. In some districts the tables just mentioned are
postponed to this stage, but in this district they are included in
the exercises of the second stage. The first exercise taught on the
plantain-leaf is to initiate the scholar into the simplest forms of
letter writing, to instruct him to connect words in composition
with each other, and to distinguish the written from the spoken
forms of Bengali vocables. The written forms are often
abbreviated in speech by the omission of a vowel or a consonant,
or by the running of two syllables into one, and the scholar is
taught to use in writing the full not the abbreviated forms. The
correct orthography of words of Sanscrit origin which abound in
the language of the people, is beyond the reach of the ordinary
class of teachers. About the same time the scholar is taught the
rules of arithmetic, beginning with addition and subtraction, but
multiplication and division are not taught as separate rules—all
the arithmetical processes hereafter mentioned being effected by
addition and subtraction with the aid of a multiplication table
which extends to the number 20, and which is repeated aloud
once every morning by the whole school and is thus acquired not
as a separate task by each boy, but by the mere force of joint
repetition and mutual imitation. After addition and subtraction,
the arithmetical rules taught divide