were made to the ancestors of the late Mola Mir Gholam Hyder
Mutawali, attached to the shrine of Shah Suffud-din Khan
Shuhid at Pandua, together with Mola Myn-ud-din or Mola Taj-
ud-din and Mir Gholam Mustafa, private persons who had no
share in the superintendence. The grants are said to have
specified certain villages or tracts of land to be exclusively
appropriated to the support of three madrasas, in addition to
those granted for the personal benefit of the grantees. The
madrasas were kept up for a generation or two, but through
carelessness or avarice were afterwards discontinued. It is added
that there were persons then living so well acquainted with the
circumstances as to be able to point out the estates that were
specified in the grants for the support of the madrasas. The
Collector, in the letter enclosing the report, intimated his
intention to investigate the matter, and in the event of the
alleged misappropriation being substantiated, to pursue the
course directed in Regulation XIX of 1810. The result of the
enquiry I have not been able to learn.
BURDWAN: (pp.70-72)
Hamilton says that in this district there are no regular
schools for instruction in the Hindoo or Mahomedan law, and
that the most learned professors of the former are procured from
the district of Nuddea on the opposite side of the Hugly. The
same remark may be applied to this statement that has already
been made with reference to the state of learning in Midnapore.
All that can be fairly understood from it is not that there are no
native schools of learning in the district, but that there were
none known to the writer, or to the public officer on whose
authority the author relied. It is exceedingly improbable, from
the analogy of other districts, that there are not some of those
domestic schools of Mahomedan learning already described, and
still more improbable that in a population of which five-sixths
are Hindoos, there should not be a still greater number of
schools of Hindoo learning.
The following references to institutions of learning in this
district were extracted from the proceedings of the Board of
Revenue at Calcutta, and first published in the memoir prepared
at the India House which I have mentioned as one of my authori-
ties:—
In September, 1818, the Collector of Burdwan was required
to report upon a pension of rupees 60 per annum, claimed by