Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 1/Section 8

Section VIII.

General Remarks on the state of Sanscrit Instruction.

The preceding section comprises the most important details respecting the state of Sanscrit learning in the districts visited, and a few general remarks may contribute to a clearer apprehension and estimate of them. First.—There is not, as far as I have been able to observe and judge, any mutual connection or dependence between vernacular and Sanscrit schools. The former are not considered preparatory to the other, nor do the latter profess to complete the course of study which has been begun elsewhere. They are two separate classes of institutions, each existing for distinct classes of society,—the one for the trading and agricultural, and the other for the religious and learned, classes. They are so unconnected, that the instruction in Bengali and Hindi reading and writing, which is necessary at the commencement of a course of Sanscrit study, is seldom acquired in the vernacular schools, but generally under the domestic roof; and unless under pecular circumstances, it is not extended to accounts, which are deemed the ultimate object of vernacular school instruction. It has been already shown that an unusually small number of vernacular schools is found in certain parts of the Beerbhoom district, which have no institutions of learning; and it now appears that in the Burdwan district, where vernacular schools comparatively abound, there also schools of learning are most numerous. On the other hand, in that division of the Tirhoot district which contains the greatest number of schools of Hindu learning there are no vernacular schools at all; and in the whole district the vernacular schools are fewer, while the proportion of schools of learning is greater than in any other district. It seems to follow that the prosperity or depression of learning in any locality does not imply the prosperous or depressed condition of vernacular instruction, and that the two systems of instruction are wholly unconnected with, and independent of, each other.

Second.—Sanscrit learning is, to certain extent, open to all classes of native society whom inclination, leisure, and the possession of adequate means may attract to its study, and beyond that limit it is confined to Brahmans. The inferior castes may study grammar and lexicology, poetical and dramatic literature, rhetoric, astrology, and medicine; but law, the writings of the six schools of philosophy, and the sacred mythological poems, are the peculiar inheritance of the Brahman caste. This is the distinction recognized in the legal and religious economy of Hinduism, but practically Brahmans monopolize not only a part, but nearly the whole, of Sanscrit 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. Of the class of teachers in Moorshedabad all are Brahmans; in Beerbhoom, of 56 teachers, one is of the medical caste; and in Burdwan, of 190, four are of the same caste. It thus appears that the only exceptions to the brahmanical monopoly of Sanscrit teaching are native physicians. In the class of students in Moorshedabad, of 153 there is only one Kayastha; in Beerbhoom, of 393 students nine are of the Vaidya or medical caste, three are Vaishnavas or followers of Chaitanya, and one is a Daivajna or out-caste Brahman—in all 13; and in Burdwan, of 1,358 students 45 are Vaidyas, 11 Daivajnas, and six are Vaishnavas—in all the others in each case being Brahmans. Comparing Bengal and Behar, the former appears to have taken a step in advance of the latter in communicating to some of the inferior castes a portion of the learning which it possesses, but even in Bengal the progress in this direction is not so great as might have taken place without running counter to the opinions and habits of the people. Still it is an advance, and it has been made in Bengal where in the department of vernacular instruction also a corresponding advance has been made, and is making, by the very lowest castes; showing that, while there is no established connection between the two systems of instruction, the same general influences are contributing to the extension of both.

Third.—The teachers and students of Sanscrit schools constitute the cultivated intellect of the Hindu people, and they command that respect and exert that influence which cultivated intellect always enjoys, and which in the present instance they peculiarly enjoy from the ignorance that surrounds them, the general purity of their personal character, the hereditary sacredness of the class to which most of them belong, the sacredness of the learning that distinguishes them, and the sacredness of the functions they discharge as spiritual guides and family priests. The only drawback on the influence they possess is the general, not universal, poverty of their condition, increased by the frequent resumption of former endowments. They are notwithstanding this a highly venerated and influential portion of native society, and although as a body their interests may be opposed to the spread, of knowledge, yet their impoverished circumstances would make them ready instruments to carry into effect any plan that should not assail their religious faith or require from them a sacrifice of principle and character. The numbers of this important class of men in the district visited are here exhibited at one view:—

		Moorshedabad.	Beerbhoom.	Burdwan.	South Behar.	Tirhoot.
Teachers	. . .	24	56	190	27	56
Students	. . .	153	393	1,358	437	214

Fourth.—The most favorable would probably not be a high estimate of the practical utility of the different branches of Sanscrit learning cultivated in these schools, but neither is that learning to be wholly despised. So long as the language shall exist, the literature it contains will constitute one of the most precious remains of antiquity connecting itself by links clearly perceptible, but not yet fully traced, with the history of almost every people of Western Asia and of Europe; and so long as the Hindus shall exist as a distinct people, they will derive some of their most inspiring associations and impulses from the great literary monuments which belong to their race, and which the progress of time will render more venerable, even when from the progress of improvement they may cease to be regarded as sacred. Viewed with reference to the present constitution and wants of native society, Sanscrit literature may be considered either as sacred, profane, or of a mixed character. The Tantra scriptures, prescribing the ritual observances of Hinduism, are exclusively religious. Law includes not only the prescriptions of religion, but the rules of inheritance, contract, &c., which are recognized by the British Government and are essential to the working of civil society. The six Darshanas, of which I have found four taught in the schools, viz., the Nyaya, Vedanta, Mimansa, and Sankhya, contain expositions not only of theological doctrine and ritual observance, but systems of philosophy on logic, on spirit and matter, and on moral and legal obligation. The mythological poems, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavat Purana, which are generally read, contain a system of metaphysical philosophy, disquisitions on political morality, and probably remnants of true history mixed up with the fables of heroes and of gods. Astrology would be more correctly denominated arithmology, for it is the science of computation in the widest sense, and embraces not only divination and the casting of nativities by the situation and aspect of the stars, but also mathematical and astronomical science. The native medical writings may be worthy of much, but not of all, the contempt with which the native medical profession is regarded by Europeans at the present day, for to a calm observer the very supremacy of their authority, which is so absolute and undisputed as to have repressed all independent inquiry, observation, and experiment, would seem to imply no inconsiderable degree of merit in the works to which such an influence has been so long conceded. Finally, the works on grammar, general literature, and rhetorical composition, will be valued as long as the philosophy of language shall be studied, or the Sanscrit language itself employed as an instrument for the expression of thought and sentiment. These, and the collateral branches of learning constitute the national literature of the Hindus,—a literature which needs not to be created, but which may be improved, by the transfusion into it of those discoveries in art, in science, and in philosophy, that distinguish Europe, and that will help to awaken the native mind from the sleep of centuries.

Fifth.—The native mind of the present day, although it is asleep, is not dead. It has a dreamy sort of existence in separating, combining, and re-casting in various forms, the fables and speculations of past ages. The amount of authorship shown to exist in the different districts is a measure of the intellectual activity which, however now misdirected, might be employed for useful purposes. The same men who have wasted, and are still wasting, their learning and their powers in weaving complicated alliterations, re-compounding absurd and vicious fictions, and revolving in perpetual circles of metaphysical abstractions, never ending still beginning, have professed to me their readiness to engage in any sort of literary composition that would obtain the patronage of Government. It is true that they do not possess the knowledge which we desire should be communicated to their countrymen; but where the desire to bestow information exist on our part, and the desire to receive it on theirs, all intermediate obstacles will speedily disappear. Instead of regarding them as indocile, intractable, or bigoted in matters not connected with religion, I have often been surprised at the facility with which minds under the influence of habits of thought so different from my own have received and appreciated the ideas which I have suggested. Nor is it authors only who might be employed in promoting the cause of public instruction, it is probable that the whole body of the learned, both teachers and students, might be made to lend their willing aid towards the same object.