Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/83

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