caste, and each caste has been expected to confine itself to its own business. A fourth hindrance, to which I propose recurring hereafter, has been caused by the difficulty of teaching the complicated Indian alphabets.

Under such circumstances it was not surprising that the promulgation of the House of Commons' resolution of 1813 was received in India with apathy and indifference. The rulers feared the evil consequences of education for the ruled, and the ruled anticipated no good results for themselves. It was not till the 17th July, 1823, that action of any kind was taken by either one side or the other. This date marks the commencement of what may be called the first educational epoch in India. On that day it was resolved by the Governor-General in Council that a General Committee of Public Instruction should be constituted for the purpose of ascertaining the state of public education, for the introduction of useful knowledge, and for the encouragement of native literature. Of this committee Sir Charles Trevelyan, who, when a member of the Bengal Civil Service, published a valuable little volume on Indian education, was one of the most active members.

Two institutions were already in existence for the encouragement of Oriental learning-the Madrassa or Arabic College established by Warren Hastings at Calcutta in 1781; the Sanskrit College founded by Mr. Jonathan Duncan at Benares in 1791, "with a view to endear our Government to the Hindus by exceeding, in our attention to them and their systems, the care ever shown by their own native princes."

A third college was founded in 1816 by the voluntary contributions of the natives themselves. This latter seminary was called the Hindu Mahā-vidyalaya, "great Hindu seat of learning," but its principal aim was to instruct young Indians in English literature and the sciences of Europe. It owed its origin to the exertions of Sir E. H. East, Mr. David Hare, and Rāja Rām Mohun Roy, but was taken in hand and improved by the new committee of public instruction.

The committee also opened a Sanskrit College at Calcutta, in 1824, and another College at Delhi in 1825, for instruction in the three classical languages of India, acting no doubt under the inspiration of the then celebrated Orientalist, and future Boden Professor, H. H. Wilson. There were also a few schools, and notably those founded at Chinsurah in 1814 by a worthy dissenting minister, Mr. May.

Here, then, we have the two distinct educational lines indicated in the House of Commons' resolution of 1813, definitely laid down. The one line led to the desired goal through the classical languages of India-Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian; the other through English. Both were recognized as media for the communication of European knowledge. Nevertheless, for the greater part of what I call the first or Orientalizing educational epoch, Oriental learning was in the ascendant. In the committee there was internecine war. Orientalists and Anglicists were irreconcilable. Each party contended

for the exclusive application of its own instrument of education. Neither was tolerant of the other. In 1833 the committee consisted of only ten members. Five were for educating by means of Oriental learning. These were Messrs. Thoby Prinsep, James Prinsep, H. Shakespear, Macnaghten, and Sutherland. Five were Anglicists, viz. Messrs. C. E. Trevelyan, J. R. Colvin, Bird, Saunders, and Bushby. The latter were not only for imparting an European education through the medium of English; they were for cutting down the sum annually lavished on the support of Oriental students, and on the printing of Sanskrit and Arabic translations. The fundamental difference of opinion between the two halves of the committee ended in a dead lock. No movement either forward or backward could be effected, because of the perfect balance between the two parties.

At this juncture (about the close of 1834) Macaulay arrived in India. The conflicting opinions of Orientalists and Anglicists were laid before him in his capacity of legislative member of the Supreme Council, and called forth his celebrated Minute of February 2nd, 1835. "All parties," he wrote in that Minute, "seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them." He then decides in favour of English, and goes on to say:

"The question before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach English, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems, which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether, when we can patronize sound Philosophy and true History, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines, which would disgrace an English farrier,-astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school,-history, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter."

This Minute-all the more misleading because penned by the most effective writer of his time-was followed by Lord W. Bentinck's equally celebrated Resolution of the 7th March, 1835, in the second clause of which his Lordship in Council expresses his opinion, "that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science amongst the natives of India." The concluding paragraph directs that "all the funds at the disposal of the committee be henceforth employed in imparting to the native population a knowledge of English literature and science, through the

medium of the English language." The date of this Resolution marks the commencement of what I venture to call the second or Anglicizing educational epoch.

Of course the Governor-General's decision was final. The Anglicists were triumphant, and, to clinch the whole matter, Macaulay was made President of the Committee. Then followed the establishment of twelve new Seminaries, and a series of corresponding measures for the promotion of English studies. Dr. Duff sided with the Anglicists. A sudden passion for European literature, and its cultivation through the acquisition of English, sprung up among the higher classes of Bengālis. English became an object of ambition, as the only avenue to good appointments, and to an improved position in society. Nor need it excite surprise that our Government should have encouraged the upper classes in their desire to become good English scholars. What strikes one as extraordinary is, that such a man as Macaulay should have set himself against vernacular education. To force English on the unlettered millions of India was, of course, impossible. Though we English-speakers in Great Britain are by far the majority, we have not yet succeeded, after more than a thousand years of close contact with the Welsh people, in inducing them to adopt our own language. Is it likely that in a vast and remote country, a few thousand Englishmen, who, although conquerors and rulers, are every year less disposed to treat India as their home, will ever succeed in imposing English on two hundred and forty-one millions of Asiatics, who possess nearly a hundred different dialects of their own, and whose organs of articulation and habits of thought, framed under opposite climatic and social conditions, are generally incapable of adapting themselves to European peculiarities of utterance, idiom, and syntax?

In Henry VIII.'s time there was scarcely anything to read for an Englishman who could not read Latin. So in India, in Lord Macaulay's time, there was scarcely anything worth reading for a native of Bengal who could not read Sanskrit. Indeed, Sanskrit was to all India more than what Latin was to all Europe. And what happened in England? The vernacular of the people, instead of decaying, drew vitality and vigour from the very language whose influence for a long time kept it in abasement. Strengthened and enriched by Latin, and recruited from other sources, English has grown into the most sturdy, copious, and effective of all languages. It has produced a literature more valuable than that of Rome or Greece.

Lord Macaulay did not seem to see that the same process had been going on in India. The vernaculars of India were quite as capable of being invigorated by Sanskrit and Arabic as European vernaculars were by Latin and Greek. In point of fact, this had been partially effected long before Macaulay's time. A lingua franca, like French in Europe, had existed in India since the invasion of Timur, A.d. 1400. Hindustani, a language formed by engrafting the Persian and Arabic

of the Musalman conquerors on a Sanskrit-Hindi stock, had already been generally adopted by the natives of India as a common medium of communication. It was a thoroughly composite and eclectic language, which, like English, had a peculiar power of extracting from other languages the materials for its own expansion and development. It had naturalized Turkish and Portuguese words, and was assimilating English. It was a living and a growing language-so instinct, indeed, with life and growth, that the Hindustani of the early part of this century, as represented by the Bagh o Bahar, may be said to be already obsolescent. What Lord Macaulay and the Committee ought to have aimed at was first the improvement and enrichment of Hindustani by the introduction and assimilation of more words and expressions from Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, English, and other modern European languages, and secondly the composition of good Hindūstānī class books, and the formation of a pure modern Hindūstānī literature. And if the natives of Bengal and of other parts of India were incapable of being instructed in European science through the medium of Hindustani class-books, their own vernaculars, Hindi, Bengāli, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu were capable of being amplified, improved, and made the vehicle of scientific truth. And here, it is to be observed, that although the Orientalists on the one side, and the Governor-General's Resolution of March 7th, 1835, on the other, very unaccountably omitted all mention of the vernaculars, a majority of the Education Committee seem in the end to have come to the conclusion that the exclusive encouragement of English could only be a temporary expedient, and “that the formation of a vernacular literature was the ultimate object to which all their efforts ought to be directed." Even Mr. (now Sir Charles) Trevelyan, the most enthusiastic and energetic of all the Anglicists, to whose educational labours India is deeply indebted, was of the same opinion. He looked through a vista of English to a time when Hindustani and Bengāli would become well fitted for every purpose of literature and science.

It must be observed, too, that Lord William Bentinck was far too wise, clear-sighted, and sagacious, not to have discerned the only possible method of reaching the mass of the people. A great impulse was given to the development of the spoken dialects under his administration. Act XXIX. of December 1st, 1837, abolished Persian and substituted the vernaculars as the language of all revenue and judicial proceedings in our Courts. "The extraordinary ease," wrote Mr. Trevelyan, "with which this change was effected proves that it took place in the fulness of time. In Bengal the Persian language had disappeared from the collectors' offices at the end of a month. melted away like snow."

It

Perhaps a still more important step had been taken previously. It was thought that before the Government did anything for the country, steps should be taken to ascertain what the country had

done and was doing for itself. In a Minute, written as far back as January 20th, 1835, Lord W. Bentinck pointed out that at a time when the establishment of education upon the largest basis had become an object of solicitude, it was essential to ascertain the number of indigenous village-schools already existing in India, the nature and amount of instruction imparted in them, with all the particulars of their foundation and support. And he expressed his belief that the "important end might be attainable, of making these institutions subsidiary and conducive to any improved general system which it might be hereafter thought proper to establish." Accordingly an experienced, painstaking missionary, Mr. W. Adam, versed in the spoken dialects, was appointed to conduct an educational survey of Bengal. The investigation extended over three years, and a report was published containing valuable statistics and important information in regard to the intellectual condition of the peasantry. What that condition must have been in 1835 may be inferred from the fact that in 1873 (according to Sir George Campbell's statistics) only 2 per cent. of the population of Bengal could read and write. The proportion for all India was only 1 in 400, while in England it was 1 in 73.

Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the number of Hindu indigenous schools, and of Maktabs or Muhammadan schools attached to mosques, was found to exceed all expectations. They were ascertained to be most numerous in secluded parts of the country remote from European influence, and from the disturbing effects of wars and invasions.

The Hindu indigenous schools are of two kinds-schools of Sanskrit learning, called in Bengal Tols, and vernacular schools for instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, conducted by village schoolmasters, and called Patha-sālās. These two kinds of schools have no interconnection. Pupils never pass from one to the other.

I made a point of visiting the well-known Sanskrit Tols at Nuddea, and found them frequented by students from all parts of India, some learning grammar, which may occupy from seven to twelve years; some law, which may require a ten years' course; and a large number studying the Nyaya system of logic, which may necessitate from thirteen to twenty-two years' curriculum. Both teachers and students in these schools of learning are of course Brahmans.

The Pundits, so far from receiving money from their pupils, not unfrequently contribute towards their support, being themselves supported by rich patrons. When the students have finished their course. of instruction they receive from their masters an honorary title, which they retain for life. I also visited schools of native learning in other parts of India, and arrived at the conclusion that the old type of Pundit, trained to repeat whole departments of Sanskrit literature by heart, is dying out. On the other hand, it seemed to me that Sanskrit learning, as encouraged by us and learnt on principles of European philology, is decidedly on the increase.