Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 1/Section 1

SECTION I.

Progress of the Inquiry.

I was originally appointed by Lord William Bentinck’s government to conduct inquiries into the state of native education in Bengal only, and I subsequently received authority from the present Government to extend them into the province of Behar. In Bengal, the districts that have been visited are those of Rajshahi, Moorshedabad, Beerbhoom, and Burdwan; and in Behar, those of South Behar, and Tirhoot.

My appointment by the Governor General in Council is dated 22nd January 1835, placing me under the orders of the General Committee of Public Instruction, whose instructions I received dated 7th March. On the 8th of April I obtained the authority of the Committee, before proceeding into the interior of the country, to report the amount of information possessed in existing publications and official documents on the subject of native education in Bengal, and such a Report was accordingly submitted to the Committee on the 1st of July following, and afterwards printed by the order of Government.

In prosecution of the further instructions of the Committee, I proceeded in the early part of July to the district of Rajshahi, and remained there till the end of October, but it was only during the month of August and a part of September that the season of the year permitted me to pursue my investigations. During the remaining part of September and the month of October I prepared a Report on the State of Education in Rajshahi, which was transmitted to the General Committee in December, and subsequently printed by the order of Government.

Since leaving Rajshahi I have not found leisure to make any other Report, and, with the exception of that district, therefore the present Report includes all the localities I have visited. The months of November and December 1835 were employed in the Moorshedabad district, January and February 1836 in the district of Beerbhoom, and March and April following in that of Burdwan. During the months of May and June I was employed, by the orders of Government, on another duty in Calcutta, but was directed to resume my educational survey in July and August. These two months were devoted to the city of Moorshedabad which, at the time I visited the district of that name, had been reserved for future investigation. Returning to Calcutta in the beginning of September, I was detained there by the other duty already referred to until the end of January 1837, when I received orders to proceed into Behar in prosecution of the inquiry into native education, and to limit my investigations to two districts, one situated to the south and the other to the north of the Ganges, as samples of the province. I was accordingly occupied in this duty in the Gya district or South Behar during the months of February, March, and a part of April; and in the Tirhoot district of North Behar during the months of May and June, when I returned to Calcutta to arrange the materials I had collected and prepare the present Report.

It thus appears that I have been engaged an aggregate period of about fifteen or sixteen months, in all seasons of the year, in the actual business of local inquiry, during which the state of native education in seven separate localities, or six districts and one principal city, has been investigated.

I have great pleasure in adding that I have been enabled by Mr. O. W. Malet, late Acting Joint Magistrate of the district of Midnapore, to communicate various details respecting the state of native education in that district. That gentleman, appreciating the utility of such inquiries, in March 1836, of his own accord, instituted an investigation into the state of education in the Midnapore district, and communicated the results to me, which will be embodied in this Report with this general acknowledgment of the source from which they been derived.

I have still further pleasure in acknowledging the ready and obliging assistance I receivd from the Magistrates of the different districts I visited, particularly from Mr. Bury and Mr. Dirom in Rajshahi, Mr. W. J. H. Money in Beerbhoom, Mr. W. Taylor in Burdwan, and Mr. Wilkinson in Tirhoot.