Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 1/Section 2

Section II.

The District of Midnapore.

Population,—This district is in the province of Orissa, but it has been so long attached to Bengal that it may be considered a component part of the province. The language chiefly spoken is Bengalee intermixed in the west with the Ooria. The great bulk of the people live a sober, regular and domestic life, and are less litigious than the inhabitants of the neighboring district. In this district there is much jungle, and between the cultivated plains and the thick jungles are situated the villages of the Sontals, a mild and inoffensive but degraded race with whom the rest of the inhabitants refuse to associate. The Santals or Sontals are stated by Mr. Stirling to be a tribe of Coles. In the north-eastern quarter of this district the Choars, formidable banditti, long resisted the authority of Government and committed the most atrocious barbarities; but they are now effectually subdued. In 1801 the population was roughly estimated at 1,500,000, of whom one-seventh were supposed to be Mahomedans.

Indigenous Elementary Schools.—In every village there are schools for teaching the Bengalee language and accounts to children in poor circumstances; but no investigation into their number or condition appears to have been instituted. The teachers, though qualified for what they undertake, are persons in no way respectable, their rank in life being low, their emolument scanty, and sometimes their character publicly tainted without any injury to their interests. The children sit in the open air or under a shed and learn to read, write, and cast accounts, the charge for schooling being generally from one to two annas per month. In opulent Hindoo families teachers are retained as servants.

Indigenous Schools of Learning.—Hamilton states that in this district there are no schools where the Hindoo or Mahomedan laws are taught. There was formerly a Mahomedan college in the town of Midnapore, and even yet the establishment is said to exist, but no law is taught. Persian and Arabic are taught by maulavis who in general have a few scholars in their houses, whom they support as well as instruct. These Persian and Arabic students, although of respectable families, are considered as living on charity; and they are total strangers to expense and dissipation. The alleged absence of schools of Hindoo learning in a population of which six-sevenths are said to be Hindoos is incredible, and is denied by learned Natives who have resided in the district and are personally acquainted with several schools of that description within its limits. They are not so numerous as the domestic schools of learning which prevail amongst the Mahomedan population; but they are not so few as to be wholly neglected. There are probably, I am told, about 40 in the district. It may be offered as a general remark to account for such incorrect statements, that the greater attention given by Europeans to the Mahomedan than to the Hindoo languages and literature, combined with the unobtrusive and retiring character of learned Hindoos, sometimes leads the public functionary to overlook institutions of Hindoo origin. It is probably from some such official authority that Hamilton has borrowed the statement to which I refer.