On the Education of the People of India/Chapter 3
CHAP. III.
The violent Opposition made by Oriental Scholars to the Resolution of the 7th March 1835.—The whole Question rests upon Two Points; first, Whether English or Arabic and Sanskrit Literature is best calculated for the Improvement of the People of India; and secondly, Whether, supposing English Literature to be best adapted for that Purpose, the Natives are willing to cultivate it.—These Points considered.
The resolution of the 7th of March 1835 was passed in the face of the most keen and determined opposition on the part of several distinguished persons whose influence had not been usually exerted in vain; and their representations were seconded by a petition got up by the numerous class of persons whose subsistence was dependent on the oriental colleges, and on the printing and other operations of the committee connected with them. The Asiatic Society also took up the cause with great vehemence, and memorialised the local government, while the Court of Directors and the Board of Control were pressed by strong remonstrances from the Royal Asiatic Society. The spirit of orientalism was stirred up to its inmost depths, and the cry of indignation of the Calcutta literati was re-echoed with more than its original bitterness from the colleges of France and Germany.
In order to understand these phenomena, it will be necessary to go back a few years in the history of India. When Lord Wellesley established the college of Fort William, he provided munificently for the encouragement of oriental learning. For a long time after, that learning was nearly the sole test of merit among the junior members of the civil service, and such military and medical officers as aspired to civil employment. A superior knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic was sure to be rewarded by a good place. The reputations of many members of the government and of nearly all the secretaries had been founded on this basis. The literary circle of Calcutta was almost exclusively composed of orientalists. The education committee was formed when this state of things was at its height, and hence the decidedly oriental cast of its first proceedings.
By degrees the rage for orientalism subsided among the Europeans, while the taste for European literature rose to a great height among the natives. A modification of the committee’s proceedings suited to this altered state of things was called for; but the persons who had been trained under the old system still occupied the strongholds of the administration, and motives were not wanting to dispose them to an obstinate defence. The habits of a long life were now for the first time broken in upon. They felt as if the world were given to understand that they had spent their strength for nought, and that their learning was altogether vanity.[1] The axe seemed to them to be laid at the root of their reputations. This was more than human nature could bear. Men who had been remarkable for self-restraint completely lost their temper, and those who had been accustomed to give free expression to their feelings showed unusual warmth on this occasion. It was a striking exhibition of character. It is true that the well-earned honours of mature life had rendered several of these distinguished persons independent of their early reputation for eastern learning. But this availed nothing. The blow had gone straight to the sources of their habitual feelings, and the effect which followed was highly remarkable.
The motive which led the oriental literary societies to take up the cause of that section of the committee which supported the interests of oriental literature is still more obvious. The object of the Asiatic societies is to investigate the history and antiquities of the East; to lay open to the European world whatever the records of Asia contain to illustrate and aid the progress of mind, of morals, and of natural history. The object of the education committee is to instruct the people of India in sound knowledge and true morality. The Asiatic societies are organs for making known the arts and sciences of Asia to Europe. The education committee is an organ for making known the arts and sciences of Europe to Asia. Yet different, and, to a great extent, incompatible, as these objects are, the education committee had acted, in the main, as if it had been only a subordinate branch of the Bengal Asiatic Society. The same gentleman was long secretary to both. Ancient learning of a kind which every body must admit to be more fit for an antiquarian society than for a seminary of popular education was profusely patronised. Extensive plans for the publication of Arabic and Sanskrit works, which exceeded the means of any literary association, were executed out of the fund which the British parliament had assigned for enlightening the people of India. The full extent of this union became apparent after it had been dissolved. A limb had been torn from the parent trunk, and the struggle with which the disruption was resisted showed how intimate the connection had been. By vehemently complaining of the suspension of the plans for the encouragement of ancient oriental literature, the literary societies virtually acknowledged the identity of their own operations and of the past operations of the education committee.
Those societies are entitled to the highest respect, and nobody can blame them for endeavouring to obtain support in the prosecution of the laudable objects for which they are associated. The responsible parties were the education committee and the Bengal government. It was for them to consider whether the mode which had been adopted of disbursing the education fund was the one best suited to the accomplishment of the object for which that fund had been instituted. If it was, they had properly acquitted themselves of the trust reposed in them, whether their plans happened to coincide with those of the Asiatic Society or not; if it was not, some change was obviously required.
This deeply important subject was long and carefully examined, both by the committee and the government. The decision which was come to has been already related, and it is needless to recount all the arguments which were used on the occasion. The whole question turns upon two points: the first of which is, whether English or Sanskrit and Arabic literature is best calculated for the enlightenment of the people of India; the other, whether, supposing English literature to be best adapted for that purpose, the natives are ready to avail themselves of the advantages which it holds out. When these points are determined the question is settled, and it is capable of being settled in no other way.
The comparative state of science in European and Asiatic countries might be supposed to be too well known to admit of any dispute on the first point; but as our opponents sometimes argue as if it were still a doubtful question whether English or oriental literature is most calculated to advance the cause of human improvement, I shall appeal to several authorities which will, I think, be listened to with deference on this question.
The pains which the late Bishop Heber took to obtain correct information on every subject which had even a remote bearing on the improvement of India are so well known, that nobody will be surprised at his having left his opinion on this vital point fully on record. The following is extracted from his letter to Sir Wilmot Horton, dated March 1824, published in the appendix to his journal.
“Government has, however, been very liberal in its grants, both to a society for national education, and in the institution and support of two colleges of Hindu students of riper age, the one at Benares, the other at Calcutta. But I do not think any of these institutions, in the way after which they are at present conducted, likely to do much good. In the elementary schools supported by the former, through a very causeless and ridiculous fear of giving offence to the natives, they have forbidden the use of the Scriptures or any extracts from them, though the moral lessons of the Gospel are read by all Hindus who can get hold of them, without scruple, and with much attention, and though their exclusion is tantamount to excluding all moral instruction from their schools, the Hindu sacred writings having nothing of the kind, and, if they had, being shut up from the majority of the people by the double fence of a dead language, and an actual prohibition to read them, as too holy for common eyes or ears. The defects of the latter will appear when I have told you that the actual state of Hindu and Mussulman literature, mutatis mutandis, very nearly resembles what the literature of Europe was before the time of Galileo, Copernicus, and Bacon. The Mussulmans take their logic from Aristotle, filtered through many successive translations and commentaries, and their metaphysical system is professedly derived from Plato, (‘Filatoun’). The Hindus have systems not very dissimilar from these, though, I am told, of greater length and more intricacy; but the studies in which they spend most of their time are the acquisition of the Sanskrit, and the endless refinements of its grammar, prosody, and poetry. Both have the same natural philosophy, which is also that of Aristotle in zoology and botany, and Ptolemy in astronomy, for which the Hindus have forsaken their more ancient notions of the seven seas, the six earths, and the flat base of Padalon, supported on the back of a tortoise. By the science which they now possess they are some of them able to foretell an eclipse, or compose an almanac; and many of them derive some little pecuniary advantage from pretensions to judicial astrology. In medicine and chemistry they are just sufficiently advanced to talk of substances being moist, dry, hot, &c. in the third or fourth degree; to dissuade from letting blood or physicking on a Tuesday, or under a particular aspect of the heavens, and to be eager in their pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of immortality.
“The task of enlightening the studious youth of such a nation would seem to be a tolerably straightforward one. But though, for the college in Calcutta, (not Bishop’s College, remember, but the Sanskrit, or Hindu College,) an expensive set of instruments has been sent out, and it seems intended that the natural sciences should be studied there, the managers of the present institution take care that their boys should have as little time as possible for such pursuits, by requiring from them all, without exception, a laborious study of Sanskrit, and all the useless, and worse than useless, literature of their ancestors. A good deal of this has been charged (and in some little degree charged with justice) against the exclusive attention paid to Greek and logic, till lately, in Oxford. But in Oxford we have never been guilty (since a better system was known in the world at large) of teaching the physics of Aristotle, however we may have paid an excessive attention to his metaphysics and dialectics.
“In Benares, however, I found in the institution supported by Government a professor lecturing on astronomy after the system of Ptolemy and Albunazar, while one of the most forward boys was at the pains of casting my horoscope; and the majority of the school were toiling at Sanskrit grammar. And yet the day before, in the same holy city, I had visited another college, founded lately by a wealthy Hindu banker, and entrusted by him to the management of the Church Missionary Society, in which, besides a grammatical knowledge of the Hindusthanee language, as well as Persian and Arabic, the senior boys could pass a good examination in English grammar, in Hume’s History of England, Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues, the use of the globes, and the principal facts and moral precepts of the Gospel, most of them writing beautifully in the Persian and very tolerably in the English character, and excelling most boys I have met with in the accuracy and readiness of their arithmetic. * * * Ram Mohan Roy, a learned native, who has sometimes been called, though I fear without reason, a Christian, remonstrated against this system last year in a paper which he sent me to be put into Lord Amherst’s hands, and which, for its good English, good sense, and forcible arguments, is a real curiosity, as coming from an Asiatic. I have not since been in Calcutta, and know not whether any improvement has occurred in consequence; but from the unbounded attachment to Sanskrit literature displayed by some of those who chiefly manage those affairs, I have no great expectation of the kind. Of the value of the acquirements which so much is sacrificed to retain I can only judge from translations, and they certainly do not seem to me worth picking out of the rubbish under which they were sinking. Some of the poetry of the Mahabarat I am told is good, and I think a good deal of the Ramayuna pretty. But no work has yet been produced which even pretends to be authentic history. No useful discoveries in science are, I believe, so much as expected; and I have no great sympathy with those students who value a worthless tract merely because it calls itself old, or a language which teaches nothing, for the sake of its copiousness and intricacy. If I were to run wild after oriental learning I should certainly follow that of the Mussulmans, whose histories seem really very much like those of Europe, and whose poetry, so far as I am yet able to judge, has hardly had justice done to it in the ultra flowery translations which have appeared in the West.”
Bishop Heber’s account of his visit to the Sanskrit college at Benares is strikingly characteristic of the system of public instruction described in the above extract. It presents a picture which would be highly amusing, if the mental and moral darkness which must be the result of such a system were not calculated to excite feelings of the deepest melancholy.
“Suttees are less numerous in Benares than many parts of India, but self-immolation by drowning is very common. Many scores, every year, of pilgrims from all parts of India come hither expressly to end their days and secure their salvation. They purchase two large Kedgeree pots, between which they tie themselves, and when empty these support their weight in the water. Thus equipped, they paddle into the stream, then fill the pots with the water which surrounds them, and thus sink into eternity. Government have sometimes attempted to prevent this practice, but with no other effect than driving the voluntary victims a little further down the river; nor indeed, when a man has come several hundred miles to die, is it likely that a police officer can prevent him. Instruction seems the only way in which these poor people can be improved, and that, I trust, they will by degrees obtain from us. “The Vidalaya is a large building divided into two courts, galleried above and below, and full of teachers and scholars, divided into a number of classes, who learn reading, writing, arithmetic, (in the Hindoo manner,) Persian, Hindoo law, and sacred literature, Sanskrit, astronomy according to the Ptolemaic system, and astrology! There are 200 scholars, some of whom of all sorts came to say their lessons to me, though, unhappily, I was myself able to profit by none, except the astronomy, and a little of the Persian. The astronomical lecturer produced a terrestrial globe, divided according to their system, and elevated to the meridian of Benares. Mount Meru he identified with the north pole, and under the southern pole he supposed the tortoise “chukwa” to stand, on which the earth rests. The southern hemisphere he apprehended to be uninhabitable, but on its concave surface, in the interior of the globe, he placed Padalon. He then showed me how the sun went round the earth once in every day, and how, by a different but equally continuous motion, he also visited the signs of the zodiac. The whole system is precisely that of Ptolemy, and the contrast was very striking between the rubbish which these young men were learning in a government establishment and the rudiments of real knowledge which those whom I had visited the day before had acquired, in the very same city, and under circumstances far less favourable. I was informed that it had been frequently proposed to introduce an English and mathematical class, and to teach the Newtonian and Copernican system of astronomy; but that the late superintendent of the establishment was strongly opposed to any innovation, partly on the plea that it would draw the boys off from their Sanskrit studies, and partly lest it should interfere with the religious prejudices of the professors. The first of these arguments is pretty much like what was urged at Oxford (substituting Greek for Sanskrit) against the new examinations, by which, however, Greek has lost nothing. The second is plainly absurd, since the Ptolemaic system, which is now taught, is itself an innovation, and an improvement on the old faith of eight worlds and seven oceans, arranged like a nest of foxes.”
My readers may be surprised to hear that this college had been “completely re-organized[2]” four years before by Professor Wilson, who went on deputation to Benares on purpose. But a reform conducted on oriental principles, means exactly the reverse of what is usually understood by a reform. In this case, correctness can be obtained only at the expense of increased absurdity; and the nearer we approach to the standard, the further we must depart from truth and reason.
In the passage first quoted, Bishop Heber calls attention to a paper sent to him by Ram Mohun Roy to be put into Lord Amherst’s hands, “which for its good English, good sense, and forcible arguments, is a real curiosity as coming from an Asiatic.” This paper was a remonstrance against the establishment of the Sanskrit college at Calcutta, which was founded by Lord Amherst, in imitation of the older institution at Benares, long after the natives had become awakened to the value of European instruction, and had instituted from their own funds, without any assistance from the government, the Hindu college at Calcutta and the English school at Benares described by Bishop Heber, for the purpose of securing for their children the benefit of such instruction. Ram Mohun Roy had the improvement of his countrymen sincerely at heart, and he was sufficiently acquainted both with oriental and European literature to be able to form a correct opinion of their relative value. His address to Lord Amherst on this occasion deserves the eulogium bestowed on it by Bishop Heber; and as it is quite to the point, I shall quote it entire.
“To His Excellency the Right Honourable Lord Amherst, Governor General in Council.
“My Lord,
“Humbly reluctant as the natives of India are to obtrude upon the notice of government the sentiments they entertain on any public measure, there are circumstances when silence would be carrying this respectful feeling to culpable excess. The present rulers of India, coming from a distance of many thousand miles to govern a people whose language, literature, manners, customs, and ideas, are almost entirely new and strange to them, cannot easily become so intimately acquainted with their real circumstances as the natives of the country are themselves. We should therefore be guilty of a gross dereliction of duty to ourselves, and afford our rulers just ground of complaint at our apathy, did we omit on occasions of importance like the present to supply them with such accurate information as might enable them to devise and adopt measures calculated to be beneficial to the country, and thus second by our local knowledge and experience their declared benevolent intentions for its improvements.“The establishment of a new Sanskrit school in Calcutta evinces the laudable desire of Government to improve the natives of India by education,—a blessing for which they must ever be grateful; and every well-wisher of the human race must be desirous that the efforts made to promote it should be guided by the most enlightened principles, so that the stream of intelligence may flow in the most useful channels.
“When this seminary of learning was proposed, we understood that the government in England had ordered a considerable sum of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We were filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other useful sciences, which the nations of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the inhabitants of other parts of the world.
“While we looked forward with pleasing hope to the dawn of knowledge thus promised to the rising generation, our hearts were filled with mingled feelings of delight and gratitude; we already offered up thanks to Providence for inspiring the most generous and enlightened nations of the West with the glorious ambition of planting in Asia the arts and sciences of modern Europe.
“We find that the government are establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindu pundits, to impart such knowledge as is already current in India. This seminary (similar in character to those which existed in Europe before the time of Lord Bacon) can only be expected to load the minds of youth with grammatical niceties and metaphysical distinctions of little or no practical use to the possessors or to society. The pupils will there acquire what was known two thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtilties since produced by speculative men, such as is already commonly taught in all parts of India.
“The Sanskrit language, so difficult that almost a lifetime is necessary for its acquisition, is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of knowledge; and the learning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it. But if it were thought necessary to perpetuate this language for the sake of the portion of valuable information it contains, this might be much more easily accomplished by other means than the establishment of a new Sanskrit college; for there have been always and are now numerous professors of Sanskrit in the different parts of the country engaged in teaching this language as well as the other branches of literature which are to be the object of the new seminary. Therefore their more diligent cultivation, if desirable, would be effectually promoted by holding out premiums and granting certain allowances to their most eminent professors, who have already undertaken on their own account to teach them, and would by such rewards be stimulated to still greater exertions.
“From these considerations, as the sum set apart for the instruction of the natives of India was intended by the government in England for the improvement of its Indian subjects, I beg leave to state, with due deference to your Lordship’s exalted situation, that if the plan now adopted be followed, it will completely defeat the object proposed; since no improvement can be expected from inducing young men to consume a dozen of years of the most valuable period of their lives in acquiring the niceties of Byakaran or Sanskrit grammar. For instance, in learning to discuss such points as the following: khad, signifying to eat, khaduti, he or she or it eats; query, whether does khaduti, taken as a whole, convey the meaning he, she, or it eats, or are separate parts of this meaning conveyed by distinctions of the word? As if in the English language it were asked, how much meaning is there in the eat, how much in the s? and is the whole meaning of the word conveyed by these two portions of it distinctly, or by them taken jointly?
“Neither can much improvement arise from such speculations as the following, which are the themes suggested by the Vedant: in what manner is the soul absorbed into the deity? what relation does it bear to the divine essence? Nor will youths be fitted to be better members of society by the vedantic doctrines, which teach them to believe that all visible things have no real existence; that as father, brother, &c. have no actual entity, they consequently deserve no real affection, and therefore the sooner we escape from them and leave the world the better. Again, no essential benefit can be derived by the student of the Mimangsa from knowing what it is that makes the killer of a goat sinless on pronouncing certain passages of the Vedant, and what is the real nature and operative influence of passages of the Vedas, &c.
“The student of the Nyayushastra cannot be said to have improved his mind after he has learned from it into how many ideal classes the objects in the universe are divided, and what speculative relation the soul bears to the body, the body to the soul, the eye to the ear, &c.
“In order to enable your Lordship to appreciate the utility of encouraging such imaginary learning as above characterized, I beg your Lordship will be pleased to compare the state of science and literature in Europe before the time of Lord Bacon with the progress of knowledge made since he wrote.
“If it had been intended to keep the British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the government, it will consequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction; embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, with other useful sciences, which may be accomplished with the sum proposed by employing a few gentlemen of talents and learning educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with necessary books, instruments, and other apparatus.
“In representing this subject to your Lordship I conceive myself discharging a solemn duty which I owe to my countrymen, and also to that enlightened sovereign and legislature which have extended their benevolent care to this distant land, actuated by a desire to improve its inhabitants, and therefore humbly trust you will excuse the liberty I have taken in thus expressing my sentiments to your Lordship.
“I have the honour, &c.
(Signed) “Ram Mohun Roy.”
This memorial was handed over by Lord Amherst to the education committee, and the fate it met with may be conjectured from the spirit which then animated that body. The memorial remained unanswered, and the design of founding a new Sanskrit college was carried into execution.
The opinion entertained on this subject by an Indian statesman of Sir Charles Metcalfe’s established character and long practical experience cannot fail to be regarded with interest. He considers Sanskrit and Arabic books as mere “waste paper,” as far as national education is concerned. His words are, “The government having resolved to discontinue, with some exceptions, the printing of the projected editions of oriental works, a great portion of the limited education fund having hitherto been expended on similar publications to little purpose but to accumulate stores of waste paper, cannot furnish pecuniary aid to the society for the further printing of those works, but will gladly make over the parts already printed either to the Asiatic Society or to any society or individuals who may be disposed to complete the publication at their own expense.” The Asiatic Society had applied to the government for funds to complete the printing of the oriental works which had been discontinued by the education committee, and this was the answer which was returned. In another part of this paper, Sir C. Metcalfe fully admits the valuable and laudable nature of the pursuits in which the Asiatic Society was engaged, but he uses, as we have seen, the most emphatic language to express his sense of the unsuitableness of Arabic and Sanskrit folios for the enlightenment of the people, and the consequent impropriety of contributing towards the printing of them out of the limited fund which had been set apart for the purpose of national education.
Both Sir Charles Metcalfe and Lord Auckland, who have presided over the administration of India since Lord William Bentinck’s departure, have given their full and cordial support to the education committee in carrying into effect the plans of the last-mentioned nobleman. It is not likely that three such men should be mistaken on a point to which, from its important bearing on Indian interests, they must have given a large share of their attention.[3]
The last authority to which I shall advert is the highest that can be had recourse to on Indian affairs. The Bengal government had reported certain measures adopted by it for the reform of the existing oriental colleges, and the establishment of the new Sanskrit college at Calcutta, and on the 18th February 1821 the court of directors, with the sanction of the board of control, replied as follows:—
Paras. 230 to 238; also letter. 10th March, 1821, Paras. 153 to 180. State of the Madressa or Mohammedan college at Calcutta, and of the Hindu college at Benares, with measures adopted for their improvement, and establishment of a Hindu college at Calcutta, in lieu of the proposed Hindu college at Nuddea and Tirhoot.“The ends proposed in the institution of the Hindu[4] college, and the same may be affirmed of the Mohammedan, were two: the first, to make a favourable impression, by our encouragement of their literature, upon the minds of the natives; and the second, to promote useful learning. You acknowledge, that if the plan has had any effect of the former kind, it has had none of the latter; and you add, that ‘it must be feared that the discredit attaching to such a failure has gone far to destroy the influence which the liberality of the endowments would otherwise have had.’ “We have from time to time been assured, that these colleges, though they had not till then been useful, were, in consequence of proposed arrangements, just about to become so; and we have received from you a similar prediction on the present occasion.
“We are by no means sanguine in our expectation, that the slight reforms which you have proposed to introduce will be followed by much improvement; and we agree with you in certain doubts, whether a greater degree of activity, even if it were produced on the part of the masters, would, in present circumstances, be attended with the most desirable results.
“With respect to the sciences, it is worse than a waste of time to employ persons either to teach or to learn them in the state in which they are found in the oriental books. As far as any historical documents may be found in the oriental languages, what is desirable is, that they should be translated; and this, it is evident, will best be accomplished by Europeans who have acquired the requisite knowledge. Beyond these branches, what remains in oriental literature is poetry; but it never has been thought necessary to establish colleges for the cultivation of poetry, nor is it certain that this would be the most effectual expedient for the attainment of the end.
“In the meantime, we wish you to be fully apprized of our zeal for the progress and improvement of education among the natives of India, and of our willingness to make considerable sacrifices to that important end, if proper means for the attainment of it could be pointed out to us; but we apprehend that the plan of the institutions, to the improvement of which our attention is now directed, was originally and fundamentally erroneous. The great end should not have been to teach Hindu learning or Mohammedan learning, but useful learning. No doubt, in teaching useful learning to the Hindus or Mohammedans, Hindu media or Mohammedan media, as far as they were found the most effectual, would have been proper to be employed, and Hindu and Mohammedan prejudices would have needed to be consulted, while every thing which was useful in Hindu or Mohammedan literature it would have been proper to retain; nor would there have been any insuperable difficulty in introducing, under these reservations, a system of instruction from which great advantage might have been derived. In professing, on the other hand, to establish seminaries for the purpose of teaching mere Hindu or mere Mohammedan literature, you bound yourselves to teach a great deal of what was frivolous, not a little of what was purely mischievous, and a small remainder, indeed, in which utility was in any way concerned.
“We think that you have taken, upon the whole, a rational view of what is best to be done. In the institutions which exist on a particular footing alterations should not be introduced more rapidly than a due regard to existing interests and feelings will dictate; at the same time that incessant endeavours should be used to supersede what is useless or worse in the present course of study by what your better knowledge will recommend.
“In the new college which is to be instituted, and which we think you have acted judiciously in placing at Calcutta, instead of Nuddea and Tirhoot, as originally sanctioned, it will be much further in your power, because not fettered by any preceding practice, to consult the principle of utility in the course of study which you may prescribe. Trusting that the proper degree of attention will be given to this important object, we desire that an account of the plan which you approve may be transmitted to us, and that an opportunity of communicating to you our sentiments upon it may be given to us, before any attempt to carry it into execution is made.”
This dispatch was referred to the education committee, who stated in reply, that in proposing the improvement of men’s minds it is first necessary to secure their conviction that such improvement is desirable; that tuition in European science was neither amongst the sensible wants of the people, nor in the power of the government to bestow[5]; that the maulavee and pundit, satisfied with their own learning, are little inquisitive as to anything beyond it, and are not disposed to regard the literature and science of the West as worth the labour of attainment; and that any attempt to enforce an acknowledgment of the superiority of the intellectual productions of the West could only create dissatisfaction.
This brings us to the second point which we had to consider, namely, whether, supposing English literature to be best adapted for the improvement of the people of India, they are themselves ready to profit by the advantages which it holds out. If it can be proved that tuition in European science has become one of the sensible wants of the people, and that, so far from being satisfied with their own learning, they display an eager avidity to avail themselves of every opportunity of acquiring the knowledge of the West, it must be admitted that the case put by the committee of 1824 has occurred, and that, according to their own rule, the time has arrived when instruction in western literature and science may be given on an extensive scale, without any fear of producing a reaction.
The proofs that such is the actual state of things have been already touched upon. As the principle of the school book society is, to print only such books as are in demand, and to dispose of them only to those who pay for them, its operations furnish, perhaps, the best test of the existing condition of public feeling in regard to the different systems of learning which are simultaneously cultivated in India. It appears, from their last printed report, that from January 1834 to December 1835 the following sales were effected by them:
| English books | 31,649 |
| Anglo-Asiatic, or books partly in English and partly in some eastern language | 4,525 |
| Bengalee | 5,754 |
| Hinduee | 4,171 |
| Hindusthanee | 3,384 |
| Persian | 1,454 |
| Uriya | 834 |
| Arabic | 36 |
| Sanskrit | 16 |
Indeed, books in the learned native languages are such a complete drug in the market, that the school book society has for some time past ceased to print them; and that society, as well as the education committee, has a considerable part of its capital locked up in Sanskrit and Arabic lore, which was accumulated during the period when the oriental mania carried every thing before it. Twenty-three thousand such volumes, most of them folios and quartos, filled the library, or rather the lumber room, of the education committee at the time when the printing was put a stop to, and during the preceding three years their sale had not yielded quite one thousand rupees.
At all the oriental colleges, besides being instructed gratuitously, the students had monthly stipends allowed them, which were periodically augmented till they quitted the institution. At the English seminaries, not only was this expedient for obtaining pupils quite superfluous, but the native youth were ready themselves to pay for the privilege of being admitted. The average monthly collection on this account from the pupils of the Hindu college for February and March 1836 was, sicca rupees, 1,325. Can there be more conclusive evidence of the real state of the demand than this? The Hindu college is held under the same roof as the new Sanskrit college, at which thirty pupils were hired at 8 rupees each, and seventy at 5 rupees, or 590 rupees a month in all. The Hindu college was founded by the voluntary contributions of the natives themselves as early as 1816. In 1831 the committee reported, that “a taste for English had been widely disseminated, and independent schools conducted by young men reared in the Vidyalaya (the Hindu college) are springing up in every direction.”[6] This spirit, gathering strength from time and from many favourable circumstances, had gained a great height in 1835; several rich natives had established English schools at their own expense; associations had been formed for the same purpose at different places in the interior, similar to the one to which the Hindu college owed its origin. The young men who had finished their education propagated a taste for our literature, and, partly as teachers of benevolent or proprietary schools, partly as tutors in private families, aided all classes in its acquirement. The tide had set in strongly in favour of English education, and when the committee declared itself on the same side, the public support they received rather went beyond, than fell short of what was required. More applications were received for the establishment of schools than could be complied with; there were more candidates for admission to many of those which were established than could be accommodated. On the opening of the Hoogly college, in August 1836, students of English flocked to it in such numbers as to render the organization and classification of them a matter of difficulty. Twelve hundred names were entered on the books of this department of the college within three days, and at the end of the year there were upwards of one thousand in regular attendance. The Arabic and Persian classes of the institution at the same time mustered less than two hundred. There appears to be no limit to the number of scholars, except that of the number of teachers whom the committee is able to provide. Notwithstanding the extraordinary concourse of English students at Hoogly, the demand was so little exhausted, that when an auxiliary school was lately opened within two miles of the college, the English department of it was instantly filled, and numerous applicants were sent away unsatisfied. In the same way, when additional means of instruction were provided at Dacca, the number of pupils rose at once from 150 to upwards of 300, and more teachers were still called for. The same thing also took place at Agra. These are not symptoms of a forced and premature effort, which, as the committee of 1824 justly observed, would have recoiled upon ourselves, and have retarded our ultimate success.
To sum up what has been said: the Hindu system of learning contains so much truth as to have raised the nation to its present point of civilization, and to have kept it there for ages without retrogading, and so much error as to have prevented it from making any sensible advance during the same long period. Under this system, history is made up of fables, in which the learned in vain endeavour to trace the thread of authentic narrative; its medicine is quackery; its geography and astronomy are monstrous absurdity; its law is composed of loose contradictory maxims, and barbarous and ridiculous penal provisions; its religion is idolatry; its morality is such as might be expected from the example of the gods and the precepts of the religion. Suttee, Thuggee, human sacrifices, Ghaut murder, religious suicides, and other such excrescences of Hinduism, are either expressly enjoined by it, or are directly deduced from the principles inculcated by it. This whole system of sacred and profane learning is knitted and bound together by the sanction of religion; every part of it is an article of faith, and its science is as unchangeable as its divinity. Learning is confined by it to the Brahmins, the high priests of the system, by whom and for whom it was devised. All the other classes are condemned to perpetual ignorance and dependence; their appropriate occupations are assigned by the laws of caste, and limits are fixed, beyond which no personal merit or personal good fortune can raise them. The peculiar wonder of the Hindu system is, not that it contains so much or so little true knowledge, but that it has been so skilfully contrived for arresting the progress of the human mind, as to exhibit it at the end of two thousand years fixed at nearly the precise point at which it was first moulded. The Mohammedan system of learning is many degrees better, and “resembles that which existed among the nations of Europe before the invention of printing;”[7] so far does even this fall short of the knowledge with which Europe is now blessed. These are the systems under the influence of which the people of India have become what they are. They have been weighed in the balance, and have been found wanting. To perpetuate them, is to perpetuate the degradation and misery of the people. Our duty is not to teach, but to unteach them, not to rivet the shackles which have for ages bound down the minds of our subjects, but to allow them to drop off by the lapse of time and the progress of events.
If we turn from Sanskrit and Arabic learning, and the state of society which has been formed by it, to western learning, and the improved and still rapidly improving condition of the western nations, what a different spectacle presents itself! Through the medium of England, India has been brought into the most intimate connection with this favoured quarter of the globe, and the particular claims of the English language as an instrument of Indian improvement have thus become a point of paramount importance. These claims have been thus described by one who will be admitted to have made good his title to an opinion on the subject:—
“How then stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother tongue; we must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate; it stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West; it abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions which, considered merely as narratives have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature; with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, trade; with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all: in India English is the language spoken by the ruling class; it is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of government; it is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East; it is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Austral-Asia,—communities which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected with our Indian Empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects.”
As of all existing languages and literatures the English is the most replete with benefit to the human race, so it is overspreading the earth with a rapidity far exceeding any other. With a partial exception in Canada, English is the language of the continent of America north of Mexico; and at the existing rate of increase there will be a hundred millions of people speaking English in the United States alone at the end of this century. In the West India islands we have given our language to a population collected from various parts of Africa, and by this circumstance alone they have been brought many centuries nearer to civilization than their countrymen in Africa, who may for ages grope about in the dark, destitute of any means of acquiring true religion and science. Their dialect is an uncouth perversion of English suited to the present crude state of their ideas, but their literature will be the literature of England, and their language will gradually be conformed to the same standard. More recently the English language has taken root in the continent of Africa itself, and a nation is being formed by means of it in the extensive territory belonging to the Cape out of a most curious mixture of different races. But the scene of its greatest triumphs will be in Asia. To the south a new continent is being peopled with the English race; to the north, an ancient people, who have always taken the lead in the progress of religion and science in the east,[8] have adopted the English language as their language of education, by means of which they are becoming animated by a new spirit, and are entering at once upon the improved knowledge of Europe, the fruit of the labour and invention of successive ages. The English language, not many generations hence, will be spoken by millions in all the four quarters of the globe; and our learning, our morals, our principles of constitutional liberty, and our religion, embodied in the established literature, and diffused through the genius of the vernacular languages, will spread far and wide among the nations.
The objection, therefore, to the early proceedings of the education committee is, that they were calculated to produce a revival, not of sound learning, but of antiquated and pernicious errors. The pupils in the oriental seminaries were trained in a complete course of Arabic and Sanskrit learning, including the theology of the Vedas and the Koran, and were turned out accomplished maulavees and pundits, the very class whom the same committee described as “satisfied with their own learning, little inquisitive as to any thing beyond it, and not disposed to regard the literature and science of the West as worth the labour of attainment.” And having been thus educated, they were sent to every part of the country to fill the most important situations which were open to the natives, the few who could not be provided for in this way taking service as private tutors or family priests. Every literary attempt connected with the old learning at the same time received the most liberal patronage, and the country was deluged with Arabic and Sanskrit books. By acting thus, the committee created the very evil which they professed to fear. They established great corporations, with ramifications in every district, the feelings and interest of whose members were deeply engaged on the side of the prevailing errors. All the murmuring which has been heard has come from this quarter; all the opposition which has been experienced has been headed by persons supported by our stipends, and trained in our colleges. The money spent on the Arabic and Sanskrit colleges was, therefore, not merely a dead loss to the cause of truth; it was bounty money paid to raise up champions of error, and to call into being an oriental interest which was bound by the condition of its existence to stand in the front of the battle against the progress of European literature.
In the five districts named in the margin, one of which contains the former Mohammedan capital of Bengal, Murshedabad, Bheerbhoom, Burdwan, South Behar, Tirhoot. Mr. Adam found only 158 students of Arabic learning. In the single government college of Calcutta there are 114 students. Although supported and patronised by the British government, this college differs in no respect from the Mohammedan colleges at Constantinople and Bokhara. It is as completely a seminary of genuine unmitigated Mohammedanism as the Jesuits’ college at Rome is a seminary of Roman Catholicism. It is considered by the Moslems as the head quarters of their religion in Bengal, and it has made Calcutta the radiating centre, not of civilization, as it ought only to be, but, to a lamentable extent, of bigotry and error.
The Sanskrit college was a still more desperate attempt to reproduce the feelings and habits of thought of past ages in the midst of a comparatively enlightened community. By establishing the Hindu college at their own expense, the Hindus had seven years before given a decisive proof that it was instruction in English and not in Sanskrit which they required. But, in spite of this evidence, the act with which we signalised the commencement of our educational operations was the establishment of a Brahminical college, in which false science and false religion are systematically taught, in which the priestly domination and monopoly of learning are maintained both by practice[9] and precept, and the members of which, although they reside at the head quarters of British Indian civilization, are always present in spirit with the founders of the Hindu system, with whom they daily converse, and to whose age they really belong. Can we wonder that the young men educated at such a seminary are, according to their own confession, burdens to the public, and objects of contempt to their countrymen? It might have succeeded if it had been established a thousand years ago; but the institutions of a barbarous age will not satisfy a people whose eyes have been opened, and who are craving after true knowledge.
After the committee had confessed that “a taste for English had been widely disseminated, and independent schools, conducted by young men reared in the Hindu college, were springing up in every direction [10],” it might have been expected that they would have modified their plan of proceeding. It was admitted, that to give instruction in European science was their ultimate object; it also appears from their report that this was the only part of their operations which was propagating itself, and proceeding with an independent spring of action; why, therefore, was scope not given to it?
For some time after this, however, we continued to prop up barbarism by the power of civilization, and to avail ourselves of the enormous influence of the English government to press on the people decayed and noxious systems, which they themselves rejected. That we did not succeed in giving to those systems a more effectual impulse was not owing to any want of exertion on our part. We pushed them as far or farther than they would go, and it was only because the natives would not buy the books printed by us, or read them without being paid to do so, that a change was at last resolved on.
- ↑ Jacquemont makes the following remarks on this subject in one of his letters to his father, vol. i. p. 222-3:—“Le Sanskrit ne ménera à rien qu’au Sanskrit. Le méchanisme de ce langage est admirablement compliqué, et néanmoins, dit on, admirable. Mais c’est comme une de ces machines qui ne sortent pas de conservatoires et des muséums, plus ingenieuses qu’utiles. Elle n’a servi qu’à fabriquer de la théologie, de la métaphysique, de l’histoire mêlée de théologie, et autres billevésées du même genre: galimathias triple pour les faiseurs et pour les consommateurs, pour les consommateurs étrangers surtout, galimathias (illegible text), &c. &c. La mode du Sanskrit et de l’orientalisme littéraire en général durera cependant, parce que ceux qui auront passé ou perdu quinze ou vingt ans à apprendre l’Arabe ou le Sanskrit n’auront la candeur d’avouer qu’ih possèdent une science inutile.”
- ↑ Education Committee’s Report, published in 1831.
- ↑ Among other proofs of the sincere interest which the present Governor General takes in the subject, he has built at his own expense a prettily designed schoolhouse in the park at Barrackpoor; and in this he has established a large English school, which he often visits, to watch the improvement and direct the studies of the pupils.
- ↑ The new Sanskrit college at Calcutta is meant, as is evident from the context, and from the abstract in the margin of the original dispatch.
- ↑ This letter was dated on the 18th August 1824. The Hindu college was established in 1816, by the voluntary subscription of the natives themselves, for the purpose of instructing their youth in European science, for which no provision had at that time been made by the government.
- ↑ The entire extract will be found at page 8.
- ↑ These are the words in which Mr. Adam sums up his description of Mohammedan learning in India; and the real state of the case could not be more accurately described. Gibbon’s sketch of Moslem learning will be found in the 52d chapter of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, under the heads, “Their real progress in the sciences,” and “Want of erudition, taste, and freedom.” But however defective Arabian learning may appear when viewed by the light of modern science, it would be doing great injustice to the Augustan age of the caliphs at Bagdad to compare it with the present æra of Mohammedan literature in India. The Indian Mohammedans are only bad imitators of an erroneous system. Arabic is studied at Calcutta as a difficult foreign language; original genius and research have long since died out, if they ever had any existence, among this class of literary people in India; and the astronomy of Ptolemy and the medicine of Galen are languidly transmitted by the dogmatic teachers of one generation to the patient disciples of the next.
- ↑ The Buddhist religion, which originated in Behar, has spread to the furthest extremity of China, and the intervening nations have always been accustomed to regard India as the fountain-head both of learning and religion. Thibetan literature is a translation from Sanskrit, and the vernacular language of Behar is the sacred language of Burmah and the adjoining countries. It may be hoped that India will hereafter become the centre of a purer faith. The innumerable islands of the South must also be powerfully acted upon by Austral-Asia, which has been wonderfully reserved to be erected at once into a civilized and powerful country in the darkest region of eastern barbarism.
- ↑ None but Brahmins and a few persons of the medical caste are admitted to study at this institution.
- ↑ See the whole extract at page 8.