On the Education of the People of India/Chapter 4
CHAP. IV.
Objections answered.—Construction of the Charter Act of 1813.—Change in the Employment of the public Endowments for the Encouragement of Learning.—Abolition of Stipends.—Probability of the Natives being able to prosecute the Study of English with effect.—The alleged Necessity of cultivating Arabic and Sanskrit for the sake of improving the vernacular Languages.—The Plan of employing Maulavees and Pundits as our Agents for the Propagation of European Science.—Whether or not it is our Duty to patronise the same Kind of Learning as our Predecessors..
I shall now proceed to reply, with as much brevity as circumstances will admit, to the objections which have been urged to the change in the committee’s plan of operation made in accordance with the resolution of the Indian government, dated the 7th March 1835; and as my object is not to write a book of my own, but to put this important subject, once for all, in a clear point of view, I shall continue to avail myself of the writings of others whenever they express what I have to say better than I could express it myself. The heads of objection will be taken from an article by Professor Wilson, entitled “Education of the Natives of India,” published in the Asiatic Journal for January 1836, which contains the most complete statement which has yet appeared of all that can be said on the oriental side of the question.
The first in order relates to the construction of that part of the charter act of 1813 by which a lac of rupees a year was assigned for the education of the natives of India. The opponents of our present plan of proceeding contend that it was not the intention of parliament, in making this assignment, to encourage the cultivation of sound learning and true principles of science, but to bring about a revival of the antiquated and false learning of the shasters, which had fallen into neglect in consequence of the cessation of the patronage which had in ancient times been extended to it by the native Hindu princes. To this argument the following reply has been made:
“It does not appear to me that the act of parliament can by any art of construction be made to bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing about the particular languages or sciences which are to be studied. A sum is set apart ‘for the revival and promotion of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories.’ It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature the parliament can have meant only Arabic and Sanskrit literature; that they never would have given the honourable appellation of a ‘learned native’ to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only such persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindus all the uses of Cusa-grass, and all the mysteries of absorption into the deity. This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. To take a parallel case: suppose that the pacha of Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge to the nations of Europe, but now sunk far below them, were to appropriate a sum for the purpose of ‘reviving and promoting literature, and encouraging learned natives of Egypt,’ would anybody infer that he meant the youth of his pachalic to give years to the study of hieroglyphics, to search into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiris, and to ascertain with all possible accuracy the ritual with which cats and onions were anciently adored? Would he be justly charged with inconsistency if, instead of employing his young subjects in deciphering obelisks, he were to order them to be instructed in the English and French languages, and in all the sciences to which those languages are the chief keys? “The words on which the supporters of the old system rely do not bear them out, and other words follow which seem to be quite decisive on the other side. This lac of rupees is set apart, not only for ‘reviving literature in India,’ the phrase on which their whole interpretation is founded, but also ‘for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories,’—words which are alone sufficient to authorize all the changes for which I contend.”
Both the court of directors and the Indian government took this view of the subject at the period when measures were first taken to carry the intentions of the British parliament into effect, and those intentions were certainly likely to have been better understood at that time than at any subsequent period. The Indian government in their instructions to the committee appointed to administer the funds made no allusion to the supposed necessity for reviving oriental literature. On the contrary, they stated the objects for which the committee had been appointed to be “the better instruction of the people, the introduction of useful knowledge, including the arts and sciences of Europe, and the improvement of their moral character,” objects with which the learning of the shasters and the Koran, which it was afterwards proposed to revive, are at complete variance. The court of directors in their dispatch written about the same period are still more explicit. They emphatically state that “it is worse than a waste of time to employ persons either to teach or to learn the sciences in the state in which they are found in oriental books;” that “the great end should not have been to teach Hindu learning or Mohammedan learning, but useful learning;” and that, in establishing seminaries for the purpose of teaching mere Hindu or mere Mohammedan literature, the Indian government bound themselves “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.” But meanwhile the administration of the fund had fallen into the hands of persons devoted to oriental studies, party zeal was excited, and the ingenuity of several able men was tasked to the utmost to defend a course of proceeding which had been adopted in spite of the declared sentiments of the court of directors and of common sense.
It was urged, in the next place, that it was downright spoliation to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which had previously been spent by the government in encouraging the study of Sanskrit and Arabic, but which were now directed to be employed in teaching English under the restrictions contained in the resolution of the 7th March 1835. To this it was replied that “the grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differ in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanatarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy: do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanatarium there, if the result should not answer our expectations? We commence the erection of a pier: is it a violation of the public faith to stop the work, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred; but nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the government has given to any person a formal assurance,—nay if the government has excited in any person’s mind a reasonable expectation, that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanskrit or Arabic, I would respect that person’s pecuniary interests. I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But to talk of a government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. There is not a single word in any public instrument from which it can be inferred that the Indian government ever intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered the destination of these funds as unalterably fixed. But, had it been otherwise, I should have denied the competence of our predecessors to bind us by any pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a government had in the last century enacted, in the most solemn manner, that all its subjects should to the end of time be inoculated for the small-pox; would that goverment be bound to persist in the practice after Jenner's discovery? These promises, of which nobody claims the performance, and from which nobody can grant a release; these vested rights, which vest in nobody; this property without proprietors; this robbery, which makes nobody poorer,—may be comprehended by persons of higher faculties than mine.—I consider this plea merely as a set form of words, regularly used both in England and in India, in defence of every abuse for which no other plea can be set up.” All the private endowments which have at different times been placed under the management of the education committee are administered with a strict regard to the intentions of the founders. A large sum of money, for instance, left by a late minister of the king of Lucknow, which was originally appropriated to the use of the oriental college at Delhi, continues to be applied to the support of oriental literature in that institution.
Another objection which has been made is, that the abolition of the stipends formerly given to students will exclude the sons of learned men who are in indigent circumstances, as well as those of all persons living at a distance from the government colleges, the advantages of which will thus be confined to the capital and to one or two great towns.
To this I answer, that, instead of two or three, there are already forty institutions scattered throughout the country; that the means of obtaining a liberal education have thus been brought into everybody’s own neighbourhood; and that the number of young men belonging to every class of society, and to every part of the Bengal provinces, who now profit by our seminaries, necessarily greatly exceeds what used to be the case under the plan of having a few expensive colleges at which the students as well as teachers received salaries. Hundreds of boys are now cultivating our literature in Assam, Arrakan, Tenasserim, and other frontier provinces, which did not send a single student to the colleges at Calcutta and Benares.
In India poverty is not the only obstacle to the education of children at a distance from their parents. The means of communication from place to place are slow and inconvenient; a journey of one or two hundred miles appears to a native the same formidable undertaking that it did to our ancestors in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and, above all, the mutual confidence which leads Englishmen to trust the entire management of their children to persons whom they often know only by reputation, is at a very low ebb in India. No native who could afford to give his son an education of any sort at home would think of sending him to be brought up among strangers. It was once proposed to educate the public wards at Calcutta, where the government itself would have had proper care taken of them, but the relations of the wards so unanimously and decidedly objected to the plan that it was at once abandoned. They had no objection, however, to their being educated under the superintendence of the government officers at their own provincial towns, with which they are in almost daily communication, and at which the young men might have resided, often in their own town houses, under the care of the old servants of the family. Besides this, the colleges under the stipendiary system were regarded by all classes as charitable institutions; and this alone would have prevented the native gentry from sending their sons to them. They were filled with the children of indigent persons, a very small proportion of whom came from a distance; and these last, even if they had learned any thing worth communicating, which they did not; would have been too few, too uninfluential, and too much isolated from the rest of the community, to be able to induce the body of their countrymen to participate in their opinions. The animating and civilizing influence arising from the neighbourhood of a large seminary, and the daily intercourse of the people with its numerous scholars, and the tendency which this has to interest the public in the subject of education, and to lead to the establishment of new institutions, was too partial under the stipendiary system to have any practical effect. Even if the education given had been of a kind calculated to enlighten the people, instead of confirming them in their errors, it would have taken ages to make an impression on the immense population of western India by such means as these.
If any class of persons be favoured by the plan which has now been adopted, it is those who are able and willing to learn, and who are in a situation to induce others to follow their example. If any be excluded, it is those who used to come to obtain food, not for the mind, but for the body, and who were too poor to be able to pursue their studies in after life. So long as we offer instruction only, we may be sure that none but willing students will attend; but if we offer money in addition to instruction, it becomes impossible to say for the sake of which they attend. These bounties on learning are the worst of bounties; they draw to a particular line a greater number of persons than that line would, without artificial encouragement, attract, or than the state of society requires. They also paralyze exertion. A person who does not want to learn a particular language or science is tempted to commence the study by the stipend; as soon as he has got the stipend he has no motive for zealously prosecuting the study. Sluggishness, mediocrity, absence of spirited exertion, and resistance to all improvemen are the natural growth of this system.
It is also of particular importance in such a country as India, and on such a subject as popular education, that the government should have some certain test of the wishes of its subjects. As long as stipends were allowed, students would of course have been forthcoming. Now the people must decide for themselves. Every facility is given, but no bribes; and if more avail themselves of one kind of instruction than of another, we may be sure that it is because such is the real bent of the public mind. But for the abolition of stipends, false systems might have been persevered in from generation to generation, which, with an appearance of popularity, would really have been preserved from falling into disuse only by the patronage of government.
The result of the experiment has been most satisfactory. Formerly we kept needy boys in pay, to train them up to be bigoted maulavees and pundits; now multitudes of the upper and middle classes flock to our seminaries to learn, without fee or reward, all that English literature can teach them. The practice of giving stipends to students was part of the general system by which learning was confined to particular castes; this monopoly has now been broken down, and all are invited to attend who are really anxious to learn. Where formerly we paid both teachers and students, we now only pay the teachers; and our means of extending our operations have been proportionably increased; yet, so great is the demand for teachers, that if we could only increase their number at will, we might have almost any number of students.
It is constantly urged by the advocates of oriental learning that the result of all our efforts will only be to extend a smattering of English throughout India, and that the question is between a profound knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic literature on the one side, and a superficial knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other.
Nothing can be more groundless than this assumption. The medical pupils who were declared by Mr. James Prinsep to have passed as good an examination for the time they had attended lectures as any class of pupils in Europe, acquired their knowledge entirely from English books and lectures delivered in English. Neither were these picked boys; they principally came from Mr. Hare’s preparatory school, and from the second and third classes of the Hindu college, and they were therefore below the standard of those who go through the whole course of instruction at our principal seminaries.
In their report published in 1831 the committee, speaking of the Hindu college, observe: “The consequence has surpassed expectation; a command of the English language and a familiarity with its literature and science have been acquired to an extent rarely equalled by any schools in Europe.”[1] Such having been the result at the Hindu college, what is there to prevent our being equally successful in the more recently established seminaries? The same class of youth have to be instructed; the same desire exists on the part of the committee to give them a really good education; we have the same means at our disposal for accomplishing that object. A single show institution at the capital, to be always exhibited and appealed to as a proof of their zeal in the cause of liberal education, might answer very well, as far as the committee themselves are concerned; but what are the people of the interior to do, to whom this education would be equally useful, and who are equally capable of profiting by it? For their sake the committee have now established many Hindu colleges.
English is a much easier language than either Arabic or Sanskrit. “The study of Sanskrit grammar,” Mr. Adam observes, “occupies about seven years, lexicology about two, literature about ten, law about ten, logic about thirteen, and mythology about four.” The course of study fixed for the Sanskrit college at Calcutta by Professor Wilson embraces twelve years, the first six of which are spent in learning grammar and composition; besides which, the boys are expected to know something of grammar before they are admitted. In three years boys of ordinary abilities get such a command of the English language as to be able to acquire every sort of information by means of it. The Sanskrit is altogether a dead language. The Arabic is not spoken in India. The English is both a living and a spoken language.[2] The Brahminical and Moslem systems belong to bygone days; a large portion of them has become obsolete; a still larger is only faintly reflected in the habits of the people. The associations connected with the new learning, on the other hand, are gaining ground every day. The English government is established; English principles and institutions are becoming familiarized to the native mind; English words are extensively adopted into the native languages; teachers, books, and schools are rapidly multiplied; the improvements in the art of education, the result of the extraordinary degree of attention which the subject has received of late years in England, are all applied to facilitate the study of English in India. Infant schools, which have lately been introduced, will enable native children to acquire our language, without any loss of time, as they learn to speak. Nine years ago, when the first English class was established in the upper provinces[3], a few old fashioned English spelling books were with difficulty procured from the neighbouring stations. Nine years hence it is probable that an English education will be every where more cheaply and easily obtained than an Arabic or Sanskrit one. It is an error to anticipate the march of events, but it is not less so to neglect to watch their progress, and to be perpetually judging the existing state of things by a standard which is applicable only to past times. “This, too, will acquire the authority of time; and what we now defend by precedents will itself be reckoned among precedents.”
Native children seem to have their faculties developed sooner, and to be quicker and more self-possessed than English children. Even when the language of instruction is English, the English have no advantage over their native class-fellows. As far as capability of acquiring knowledge is concerned, the native mind leaves nothing to be desired. The faculty of learning languages is particularly powerful in it. It is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of the Continent, foreigners who can express themselves in English with so much fluency and correctness as we find in hundreds of the rising generation of Hindus. Readiness in acquiring languages, which exists in such a strong degree in children, seems to exist also in nations which are still rising to manhood. No people speak foreign languages like the Russians and Hindus. Such nations are going through a course of imitation, and those qualities of mind upon which their success depends seem to be proportionately developed.
When we go beyond this point to the higher and more original powers of the mind, judgment, reflection, and invention, it is not so easy to pronounce an opinion. It has been said, that native youth fall behind at the age at which these faculties begin most to develope themselves in Englishmen. But this is the age when the young Englishman generally commences another and far more valuable education, consisting in the preparation for, and practice of some profession requiring severe application of mind; when he has the highest honours and emoluments opened to his view as the reward of his exertions, and when he begins to profit by his daily intercourse with a cultivated intellectual, and moral society. Instead of this, the native youth falls back on the ignorant and depraved mass of his countrymen; and, till lately, so far from being stimulated to further efforts, he was obliged to ask himself for what end he had hitherto laboured. Every avenue to distinction was shut against him; and his acquirements served only to manifest the full extent of his degraded position. The best test of what they can do, is what they have done. Their ponderous and elaborate grammatical systems, their wonderfully subtle metaphysical disquisitions, show them to have a German perseverance and Greek acuteness; and they certainly have not failed in poetical composition. What may we not expect from these powers of mind, invigorated by the cultivation of true science, and directed towards worthy objects! The English, like the Hindus, once wasted their strength on the recondite parts of school learning. All that we can say with certainty is, that the Hindus are excellent students, and have learned well up to the point to which their instructors have as yet conducted them. A new career is now opened to them : the stores of European knowledge have been placed at their disposal: a cultivated society of their own is growing up: their activity is stimulated by the prospect of honourable and lucrative employment. It will be seen what the next fifty years will bring forth.
To return to the point from which I have digressed; it is true, that a smattering of English formerly prevailed to a considerable extent, without any beneficial result; and that English acquirements were held in great contempt. The government then encouraged nothing but Oriental learning; and English, instead of being cultivated as a literary and scientific language, was abandoned to menial servants and dependents, who hoped by means of it to make a profit of the ignorance of their masters. It was first rescued from this state of degradation by Lord William Bentinck who made it the language of diplomatic correspondence.[4] It was afterwards publicly recognised as the most convenient channel, through which the upper and middle classes of the natives could obtain access to the knowledge of the West; and many very good seminaries were established, to enable them to acquire it. The prejudice against English has now disappeared, and to know it, has become a distinction to which people of all classes aspire. There can be no doubt therefore of our now being able to make a deep and permanent impression on the Hindu nation through this medium, if sufficient means of instruction are provided.
Another argument urged for teaching Arabic and Sanskrit is, that they are absolutely necessary for the improvement of the vernacular dialects. The latter, it is said, are utterly incapable of representing European ideas; and the natives must therefore have recourse to the congenial, accessible, and inexhaustible stores of their classical languages. To adopt English phraseology would be grotesque patchwork; and the condemnation of the classical languages to oblivion, would consign the dialects to utter helplessness and irretrievable barbarism.
The experience both of the East and West demonstrates, that the difficulty which this argument supposes never can exist. If the national language can easily express any new idea which is introduced from abroad, a native term is usually adopted. But, if not, the word, as well as the meaning, are imported together from the same fountain of supply. This is the ordinary process; but the supply of words is not always limited to the strict measure of our wants. Languages are amplified and refined by scholars, who naturally introduce the foreign words with which their minds are charged, and which, from their being in the habit of using them, appear to them to be more expressive than any other. Hence that wealth of words, that choice of verbal signs,—some of domestic and others of foreign origin; some borrowed from cognate, and others from radically different sources, which characterises the languages of the modern civilised nations. The naturalisation of foreign knowledge is, no doubt, a task of some difficulty; but history proves that as fast as it can be introduced, words are found in more than sufficient abundance to explain it to the people, without any special provision being necessary for that purpose. The greater effort involves the less; and this is the first time any body ever thought of separating them.
Take our own language as an example. Saxon is the ground-work of it; Norman-French was first largely infused into it: then Latin and Greek, on the revival of letters; and, last of all, a few words from other modern languages. Each of these has blended harmoniously with the rest; and the whole together has become one of the most powerful, precise, and copious languages in the world. Yet Latin, and Greek, and French are only very distantly related to the Saxon. It is curious that our own language, which we know to be so consistent and harmonious, had formerly the same reproach of incongruity cast on it. Klopstock called it an ignoble and barbarous mixture of jarring materials; to which Schlegel justly replied, that although English is compounded of different languages, they have been completely fused into one and that no Englishman ordinarily thinks of the pedigree of the words which he uses, or is in the least offended by the difference in their origin. The same may be said, more or less, of all the modern European languages. If Bengalee and Hindusthanee ever become as well fitted for every purpose of literature and science as English and French, no person will have reason to complain of the process by which this may have been effected. A similar process has been gone through in India. Sanskrit itself was engrafted by a race of conquerors on the national languages, and very evident traces of its incongruity with them exist in the south of India[5], and in various hilly tracts. The Mahommedan invaders afterwards introduced a profusion of Arabic and Persian, and a few Turkish words. The Portuguese contributed the naval vocabulary and many other words, which are now so blended with the vernacular dialects as not to be distinguishable by the natives from words of ancient Indian origin. And, lastly, numerous English words have been already naturalised, and others are daily becoming so through the medium of our civil and military systems, of our national customs and institutions, and, above all, of our literature and science, which are now extensively cultivated by the rising generation. Of these auxiliary languages, the ancient unadulterated Persian is closely allied to the Sanskrit; but Arabic, with which Persian has been completely saturated since the conquest of Persia by the Arabians[6], is as unlike Sanskrit as it is possible for one language to be unlike another. The Sanskrit delights in compounds: the Arabic abhors the composition of words, and expresses complex ideas by circumlocution. The Sanskrit verbal roots are almost universally biliteral: the Arabic roots are as universally triliteral. They have scarcely a single word in common. They are written in opposite directions; Sanskrit, from left to right; Arabic, from right to left. “In whatever light we view them,” observes Sir William Jones, “they seem totally distinct; and must have been invented by two different races of men.” Portuguese and English, on the other hand, through their close connection with Latin and Greek, have a great deal in common with Sanskrit.
In the face of these facts it is gravely asserted to be “indispensably necessary”[7] to cultivate congenial classical languages, in order to enrich and embellish the popular Indian dialects. Then, with a strange inconsistency, it is proposed to cultivate, for this purpose, as being a congenial language, the Arabic, which is the most radically different from the Indian dialects of any language that could be named; and, lastly, the English language, which has a distant affinity to those dialects, through the Saxon, and a very near connection with them through the Latin and Greek, is rejected as uncongenial.
When we once go beyond the limits of the popular vocabulary, Sanskrit, Arabic, and English are equally new to the people. They have a word to learn which they did not know before; and it is as easy for them to learn an English as a Sanskrit word. Numerous Arabic, English, and Portuguese terms have thus become household words in India, the Sanskrit synonymes of which are utterly unknown to the people. The first form part and parcel of the popular language: the last have no existence beyond the Shasters and the memories of a few hundred Pundits who are conversant with those old records. A gentleman, holding office in India, lately attempted to reduce to practice the theory now under consideration. In his official communications to the neighbouring courts, every word not of Sanskrit origin was carefully expunged, and a pure Sanskrit word was substituted for it. Thus Sungrahuk was thrust in the place of Collector, Sunkhuk of Number, Adhesh of Hukm, Bhoomadhikaree of Zemeendar; and so on. The consequence was, that his communications were unintelligible to the persons to whom they were addressed; and it would have been better if they had been in Persian, from which we had at that time just escaped, than in such a learned jargon.
As it is therefore a matter of indifference from what source the vocabulary is derived, while it is admitted that English must be cultivated for the sake of the knowledge which it contains, will it not be advisable to make English serve both these purposes; to draw upon it for words as well as ideas; to concentrate the national energies on this single point? Otherwise it will be necessary for the same persons to make themselves good English scholars, in order that they may learn chemistry, geology, or mechanics; and good Sanskrit scholars, in order that they may get names to apply to what they have learned. Our main object is, to raise up a class of persons who will make the learning of Europe intelligible to the people of Asia in their own languages. An enlarged and accurate knowledge of the systems they will have to explain, such as can be derived only from a long course of study, will, at any rate, be necessary to qualify them for this important task. But, if they will then have to begin again, and to devote nine years more to the study of Sanskrit philology, we might as well at once abandon the attempt. Neither would it be possible for one set of persons to provide learning, and another words; and for every lecturer or writer on European subjects always to have his philologer at his elbow, to supply him with Sanskrit terms as they are required. Until the duration of human life is doubled, and means are found to maintain the literary class through twice the longest period now allotted to education, such complicated and cumbrous schemes of national improvement will be impracticable: and even if they were practicable, they would be useless. When the people have to learn a new word, it is of no consequence whether they learn at Sanskrit or an English one; and all the time spent in learning Sanskrit would therefore be downright waste.
After a language has once assumed a fixed character, the unnecessary introduction of new words is, no doubt, offensive to good taste. But in Bengalee and Hindusthanee nothing is fixed; every thing is yet to be done, and a new literature has to be formed, almost from the very foundation. The established associations, which are liable to be outraged by the obtrusion of strange words, have therefore no existence in this case. Such refinement is the last stage in the progress of improvement. It is the very luxury of language; and to speak of the delicate sensibility of a Bengalee or Hindusthanee being offended by the introduction of new words to express new ideas, is to transfer to a poor and unformed tongue the feelings which are connected only with a rich and cultivated one. It will be time enough after their scientific vocabulary is settled, and they have masterpieces of their own, to think of keeping their language pure. When they have a native Milton or Shakspeare, they will not require us to guide them in this respect.
All we have to do is to impregnate the national mind with knowledge. The first depositaries of this knowledge will have a strong personal interest in making themselves intelligible. They will speak to, and write for, their countrymen, with whose habits of mind and extent of information they will be far better acquainted than it is possible for us to be. They will be able to meet each case as it arises far more effectually than it can be done by laying down general rules before-hand. Those who write for the educated classes will freely avail themselves of English scientific terms. Those who write for the people will seek out popular explanations of many of those terms at a sacrifice of precision and accuracy. By degrees, some will drop out of use, while others will retain their place in the national language. Our own language went through this process. After a profuse and often pedantic use of Latin and Greek words by our earlier writers, our vocabulary settled down nearly in its present form, being composed of words partly of indigenous, and partly of foreign, origin, to which occasional additions are still made, as they are required, from both sources. The only safe general rule which can be laid down on this subject, is to use the word which happens at the time to be the most intelligible, from whatever language it may be derived, and to leave it to be determined by experience whether that or some other ought to be finally adopted.
If English is to be the language of education in India, it follows, as a matter of course, that it will be the scientific language also, and that terms will be borrowed from it to express those ideas for which no appropriate symbols exist in the popular dialects. The educated class, through whom European knowledge will reach the people, will be familiar with English. They will adopt the English words with which they are already acquainted, and will be clear gainers by it, while others will not be losers. The introduction of English words into the vernacular dialects will gradually diminish the distance between the scientific and popular language. It will become easier for the unlearned to acquire English, and for the learned to cultivate and improve the vernacular dialects. The languages of India will be assimilated to the languages of Europe, as far as the arts and sciences and general literature are concerned; and mutual intercourse and the introduction of further improvements will thus be facilitated. And, above all, the vernacular dialects of India will, by the same process, be united among themselves. This diversity of language is one of the greatest existing obstacles to improvement in India. But when English shall every where be established as the language of education, when the vernacular literature shall every where be formed from materials drawn from this source, and according to models furnished by this prototype, a strong tendency to assimilation will be created. Both the matter and the manner will be the same. Saturated from the same source, recast in the same mould, with a common science, a common standard of taste, a common nomenclature, the national languages, as well as the national character, will be consolidated; the scientific and literary acquisitions of each portion of the community will be at once thrown into a common stock for the general good; and we shall leave an united and enlightened nation, where we found a people broken up into sections, distracted by the system of caste, even in the bosom of each separate society, and depressed by literary systems, devised much more with a view to check the progress, than to promote the advance, of the human mind. No particular effort is required to bring about these results. They will take place in the natural course of things by the extension of English education, just as the inhabitants of the greater part of Europe were melted down into one people by the prevalence of the Roman language and arts. All that is required is, that we should not laboriously interpose an obstacle to the progress of this desirable change by the forced cultivation of the Sanskrit and Arabic languages.
The argument we have been considering is the last hold of the oriental party. Forced to admit that Sanskrit and Arabic are not worth teaching for the knowledge they contain, they would obtain a reprieve for them on the ground that their vocabularies are required to patch up the vernacular dialects for the reception of Western knowledge. Discarded as masters, they are to be retained as servants to another and a better system. Their spirit has fled, but their carcase must be preserved to supply the supposed deficiencies, and to impair the real energies, of the system which is growing up in their place.
But, specious as the argument is, I should not have dwelt on it so long, if it had not been closely connected with a most pernicious error. The time of the people of India has hitherto been wasted in learning languages as distinguished from knowledge—mere words as distinguished from things—to an extent almost inconceivable to Europeans. This has been in a great measure unavoidable. The Mahommedan legal system was locked up in Arabic; the Hindu in Sanskrit; Persian was the language of official proceedings; English that of liberal education and of a great part of our judicial and revenue system all of these being independent of the common colloquial languages. If, therefore, a person learned only one foreign or dead language, it was impossible for him to qualify himself to take an efficient part in public business. If he learned several, his best years were wasted in the unprofitable task of studying grammar and committing vocabularies to memory. Persons were considered learned in proportion to the number of languages they knew; and men, empty of true knowledge and genius, acquired great reputations, merely because they were full of words. As great a waste of human time and labour took place in India under this state of things, as is caused in China by their peculiar system of writing. In one country, life was exhausted in learning the signs of words, and in the other in learning words themselves.
At first we gave decided encouragement to this false direction of the national taste. Our own attention was turned the same way. Oriental philology had taken the place of almost every other pursuit among our Indian literary men. The surprising copiousness, the complicated mechanism of the Sanskrit and Arabic languages were spoken of as if languages were an end to be attained, instead of a means for attaining an end, and were deserving of being studied by all sorts of people without any reference to the amount or kind of knowledge which they contain. All the concurrent systems were liberally patronised by the government, and the praises and emoluments lavished on great Arabic and Sanskrit scholars, were shared by natives as well as Europeans.
By degrees, however, a more wholesome state of things began to prevail. The government ceased to give indiscriminate support to every literary system, without reference to its real merits. Persian is ceasing to be the language of business. The study of Arabic and Sanskrit will soon be rendered superfluous by the inestimable boon which is being prepared for the people, of a complete body of law in their own language. By these changes an incalculable saving of human labour will be effected. The best literary, scientific, and professional education will be obtained at the expense of learning a single foreign language: and the years which were before painfully spent in breaking the shell of knowledge, will be employed in devouring the kernel.But if it be really true that the cultivation of the ancient classical languages is necessary to qualify the popular dialects for the reception of European knowledge, the progress of this salutary change must be arrested in the midst; the intellect of the country must be rechained to the heavy burden which has, for so many ages, prevented it from standing upright; and a pursuit which absorbs the time of the literary class, to the exclusion of those studies which can alone enable them to regenerate their country, must be indefinitely persevered in. It is true that neither the law, nor the administration of it, nor the established system of public instruction, any longer require this enormous sacrifice. But the philological system lately propounded by the advocates of Oriental education does require it. Such is the expense at which this theory is to be maintained. If crores, instead of lacs of rupees, had been spent in founding Sanskrit colleges and printing Sanskrit books, it would have been as nothing compared with this. The mental and moral energies of India are to be kept for ages in a state of worse than Egyptian bondage, in order that the vernacular dialects may be improved from congenial, instead of from uncongenial, sources. The ordinary terms on which the God of wisdom has accorded knowledge to his creatures are thought too easy; and new and hitherto unheard-of conditions[8] are to be imposed, of such a nature as must effectually prevent the monopoly of learning, hitherto maintained in the East, from being broken in upon by the rapid diffusion of English education.
Another argument used by the Oriental party is, that little real progress can be made until the learned classes in India are enlisted in the cause of diffusing sound knowledge, and that “one able Pundit or Maulavee, who should add English to Sanskrit or Arabic, who should be led to expose the absurdities and errors of his own systems, and advocate the adoption of European knowledge and principles, would work a greater revolution in the minds of his unlettered countrymen than would result from their proficiency in English alone.”The first objection to this plan of reform is, that it is impracticable. An able Pundit or Maulavee can be formed only by a long course of instruction, extending far into the years of manhood. It is then too late to begin a new training in European literature and science, and even if it were not too late, they would have no inclination for the task. Their interest, their affections, their prejudices, their pride, their religious feelings are all pre-engaged in behalf of the systems under the influence of which they have grown up, and by which their minds have been formed. Their time of change is in every respect gone by. Although the system of education advocated by the oriental party had a fair trial of upwards of ten years, no teacher of this description was produced, nor was there ever any appearance of one. A few Maulavees and Pundits may, to please us, have acquired a superficial knowledge of a few of the most obvious parts of the European systems of geography and astronomy, but none of them showed any disposition to preach a crusade against the systems under which they had been brought up, and to which they were still as much attached as any of their class.
The next objection to this scheme is, that even if it were practicable, it is quite unnecessary. The object for which it is proposed to raise up teachers endowed with such rare qualifications, has been already accomplished. A revolution has already taken place in men’s minds, not only among the unlettered, but what is of far more consequence, among the middle and upper classes, whose property, activity, and influence will secure the further extension, and the permanence of the change. The people are greedy for European knowledge, and crowd to our seminaries in greater numbers than we can teach them. What more do we want? Where would have been the wisdom of entertaining the 1,200 English students who besieged the doors of the Hooghly College with lectures on the absurdities of the Pooranic system of the earth? They already fully admitted the superiority of our system, and came on purpose to be instructed in it; and so it is with thousands of youth in every part of the Bengal provinces.
It is in vain to direct our instructions to those whose habits of mind are identified with the old system, and whose reputation and subsistence depend on its continuance. If Luther had addressed the Roman Catholic clergy, and Bacon the schoolmen, instead of the rising generation, and all who were not strongly pre-engaged in behalf of any system, we should have missed our European Reformation, both of philosophy and religion. Still less ought we to propagate the very systems, which it is our object to supplant, merely in the hope of being able to ingraft some shoots of European science upon them. Bacon did not educate schoolmen, nor Luther Roman Catholic priests, to become the instruments of their reforms. At this rate we should have been ever learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. The barren trunk and branches would have been always growing, while the exotic additions to this uncongenial stock, having no root in themselves, would have produced no fruit, however often they might have been renewed. Neither is it necessary or desirable to carry on war against the old system by direct attacks upon it, or by making offensive assertions of the superiority of our own. The ordinary effect of controversy is to excite hostility and bitterness of spirit. Ram Mohun Roy, who comes nearer to the idea of the reformed teacher of the orientalists than any body else who has appeared, was looked upon as an apostate by his party, and they were roused by his attacks to organise a regular opposition to his views.
What we have to do is, not to dispute, but to teach—not to prepossess the minds of the natives with false systems, and to keep our good instruction till it is too late to be of use, but to get the start of their prejudices by educating them, from the beginning, according to our own views. We ought to cherish European learning, which has already taken deep root and begun to throw out vigorous shoots, leaving the trunk of the old system to a natural and undisturbed decay. The rising generation will become the whole nation in the course of a few years. They are all craving for instruction, and we may mould their unoccupied and supple minds in any way we please.
The ancient system of learning is so constituted that while we have no assistance to expect, we have, at the same time, no opposition to fear, from its native professors. According to the theory of Hinduism, Law, Philosophy and Divinity, are the peculiar inheritance of the Brahmins, while the study of other branches of literature and science is open to the inferior castes. “But practically,” Mr. Adam observes, “Brahmins monopolise not only a part, but the whole, of Sanskrit learning. In the two Behar districts, both teachers and students, without a single exception belong to that caste, and the exceptions in the Bengal districts are comparatively few.” The Hindu system of learning is, in short, a close monopoly, which has been established by the Brahmins to secure their own pre-eminence. They make no proselytes, because they wish to have no rivals. Why therefore should we strive to extend this system beyond the limits which the Brahmins themselves wish? They have no notion of making it popular: their object is to confine it within the limits of the sacerdotal class. We, on the contrary, for a long time acted as if we desired to inundate the whole country with it. All the Brahmins aim at is, not to be interfered with in the exclusive enjoyment of their peculiar learning. The education of the mass of the people does not enter into their views: this great field is totally unoccupied; and we may establish on it our own machinery of public instruction, without clashing with any other interest.
Our plan is based on exactly opposite principles from that of the Brahmins. Our object is to promote the extension[9], not the monopoly of learning; to rouse the mind and elevate the character of the whole people, not to keep them in a state of slavish submission to a particular sect. The laity, the great body of the middle and upper classes of native society, are now, for the first time, invited to enjoy the benefits of a liberal education. The key of knowledge has been restored to them; and they have been compensated for their long exclusion, by having opened to them fields of science with which the learning of the Brahmins is not to be compared. Wealth, numbers, influence, are on their side. The movement is becoming more and more irresistible; and the power of directing the public mind is passing from those who have exercised it for the last two thousand years to an entirely new set of men.
Although the knowledge of Sanskrit is confined to the Brahminical caste, the Brahmins are by no means practically limited to a studious and religious life: the majority of them, perhaps, get their subsistence by secular pursuits. The number of persons, therefore, devoted to the study of Sanskrit is surprisingly small when it is closely examined: the number of those who study Arabic is still smaller. The following table, extracted from Mr. Adam’s report, shows the actual number of teachers and students of those languages, in five of the principal districts of Bengal and Behar:
| arabic. | sanskrit. | |||
| Teachers. | Students. | Teachers. | Students. | |
| Moorshedabad | 2 | 7 | 24 | 153 |
| Beerbhoom | 2 | 5 | 56 | 393 |
| Burdwan | 12 | 55 | 190 | 1358 |
| South Behar | 12 | 62 | 27 | 437 |
| Tirhoot | 6 | 29 | 56 | 214 |
| Total | 34 | 158 | 353 | 2555 |
Besides the 158 Arabic students, Mr. Adam found 3,496 youths learning Persian in the five districts examined by him. But, although Arabic and Persian literature is strictly Mahommedan, the majority of the scholars were Hindus; “Is this comparative large number of Hindu scholars" Mr. Adam continues “the effect of a laudable desire to study a foreign literature placed within their reach? Or is it the effect of an artificial stimulus? This may be judged by comparing the number of Hindu teachers and scholars of Persian, which, until lately, was almost the exclusive language of local administration, with that of Hindu teachers and scholars of Arabic, which is not called into use in the ordinary routine of government. With regard to teachers; there is not a single Hindu teacher of Arabic in the five districts: all are Mussulmans. With regard to scholars, there are only 9 Hindu to 149 Mussulman students of Arabic, and consequently 2,087 Hindus to 1,409 Mussulmans who are learning Persian. The small comparative number of Arabic students who are Hindus, and the large comparative number of the Persian scholars of the same class seem to admit of only one explanation; viz., that the study of Persian has been unnaturally forced by the practice of government; and it seems probable, that even a considerable number of the Mussulmans who learn Persian may be under the same artificial influence.” This is another proof, that the tendency of our system has hitherto been to encourage not English but Mahommedan learning.
Persian has now ceased to be the official language; and, as it is not recommended by any other consideration, the study of it must soon die out. The inducement to learn Arabic will be greatly diminished, if it will not be altogether annihilated by the promulgation of a code. Sanskrit will, for the same reason, be cultivated by a smaller number of persons than formerly; and the study of it will be confined to those Brahmins who wish to qualify themselves to be priests and astrologers. Meanwhile the tide has set in strongly in favour of English; and the popular inclination is seconded by a system of public instruction, which is daily becoming more extended and better organised: an advantage which the old learning never had. The Brahminical monopoly of knowledge is now reacting on those for whose benefit it was established; and the national curiosity, which had for so many ages been deprived of its natural gratification, is greedily availing itself of the new opening presented to it. If this disposition of the people be only moderately gratified by the establishment so proper means of instruction, we may reasonably expect that ten years hence the number of person studying English will be in the proportion of ten to one to those who will be studying the learned Oriental languages.
Lastly; it is urged, that as we have succeeded the native chiefs who were the natural patrons of Indian learning, we are bound to give that aid to Oriental scholars which they would have done had they never been displaced by us.
To promote the spread of knowledge among our subjects is undoubtedly one of the most sacred duties which has devolved on us as the rulers of India: but I cannot admit the correctness of the test by which the Oriental party would determine the kind of knowledge to be taught. Is it meant that we are bound to perpetuate the system patronised by our predecessors, merely because it was patronised by them, however little it may be calculated to promote the welfare of the people? If it be so, the English rule would be the greatest curse to India it is possible to conceive. Left to themselves, the inherent rottenness of the native systems must, sooner or later, have brought them to a close. But, according to this view of the subject, the resources of European skill are to employed in imparting to them a new principle of duration: knowledge is to be used to perpetuate ignorance civilisation to perpetuate barbarism; and the iron strength of the English Government to bind faster still the fetters which have so long confined the native mind. This is a new view of our obligations; and, if it be a just one, it is to be hoped that in pity to our subjects we shall neglect this branch of our duties. Fortunately for them, we have not thought it incumbent on us to act on this rule in other departments of administration. We have not adopted into our system barbarous penal enactments and oppressive modes of collecting the revenue because they happened to be favourites with our predecessors. The test of what ought to be taught is, truth and utility. Our predecessors consulted the welfare of their subjects to the best of their information: we are bound to do the same by ours. We cannot divest ourselves of this responsibility: the light of European knowledge, and the diffusive spirit of European benevolence give us advantages which our predecessors did not possess. A new class of Indian scholars is rising under our rule, more numerous and better instructed than those who went before them; and, above all, plans are in progress for enlightening the great body of the people as far as their leisure will permit an undertaking which never entered into the imagination of any of the former rulers of India.
- ↑ The whole extract will be found at page 8.
- ↑ The familiar use of a living language is an advantage which the teachers of Latin and Greek, as well as those of Sanskrit and Arabic, might envy.
- ↑ At Delhi.
- ↑ Translations are sent, with the Governor-General’s letters, to the native princes, when there is any doubt as to their being understood.
- ↑ The languages of the Peninsula, south of the districts in which Mahratta is commonly spoken, derive more than half their words from sources entirely independent of the Sanskrit.
- ↑ Arabic has been extensively introduced into the Indian vernacular languages, both mediately through Persian and immediately from Arabic literature. The complete union of the Arabic with the ancient Persian language, is as much a proof that the most uncongenial languages will readily amalgamate as its union with the Indian dialects.
- ↑ If the supposed necessity really existed, our language must have been first improved by the cultivation of Anglo-Saxon philology, instead of Norman-French; the fathers of English literature must have coined words from the Teutonic dialects, to express the thoughts of the Greek, Roman, and Italian authors; our vocabularies of war, cookery, and dress-making, instead of being unaltered French, must first have been filtered through a German medium; and in India, every idea which has been adopted from the religion, the learning, and the jurisprudence of the Arabians, must have been translated into good Sanskrit before it could have been naturalised.
- ↑ The natives themselves have no idea of this alleged dependence of the vernacular languages upon the Sanskrit. Mr. Adam observes, at page 77 of his last report, “There is no connection between the Bengalee and Sanskrit schools of Bengal, or between the Hindee and Sanskrit schools of Behar: the teachers, scholars, and instruction of the common schools are totally different from those of the schools of learning, the teachers and scholars being drawn from different classes of society, and the instruction directed to different objects. But this remark does not apply to the Persian and Arabic schools, which are intimately connected, and which almost inperceptibly pass into each other;” and to the same effect at greater length at page 59.
- ↑ The diffusive spirit of European learning is strikingly exemplified in the young men who are educated at our institutions. To convince others of the superiority of European knowledge, and to communicate that knowledge to them, is evidently regarded both as a duty and pleasure by them. It is a matter of course with them: their letters are full of it. Those who are rich establish, or aid in the establishment of schools: those who are poor often devote their leisure hours to giving gratuitous instruction;—they all aid in the good work to the extent of their ability. There may be something of the zeal of new converts in this, and of a desire to secure their own footing by increasing the number of the followers of the new learning: but, whatever may be the motive, the practice shows that Sanskrit and English literature inspire exactly opposite views of relative duty; and that while one is eminently selfish and exclusive, the other is benevolent and diffusive in its tendency. I believe that, in the great majority of instances, the educated natives are actuated in promoting the spread of European learning by a sincere desire to benefit their countrymen, by communicating to them that from which they have themselves derived so much pleasure and advantage. The same class of persons are distinguished by their liberal support of the public charities at Calcutta, a duty in which the native gentlemen who have been brought up under the old system miserably fail. We shall not be surprised at this, when we recollect that our literature is deeply impregnated with the spirit of our beneficent religion; and that even the modern philosophy, which rejects religion, or professes to supply motives of action independent of it, has for its avowed object the amelioration of the condition of the mass of mankind.
- ↑ The number of persons who cultivate the learned Eastern languages, is certainly much smaller in the Western provinces than in Bengal or Behar. There may be a few more Arabic scholars in some of the principal towns; but Sanskrit is generally held in no esteem, and is very little attended to. Whole districts might be named in which it would be difficult to find an Arabic or Sanskrit student.