Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/96

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state of education in bengal

intended to be employed within the diocese of Calcutta, if required by the Society, on their first arrival in India proceed to the college and there remain in the study of the Native languages. There is a press at the college, the superintendence of which is until especially appointed by the visitor to a missionary station, in the college-council, and the selection of works to be printed is confined to the ordinary and extraordinary syndicate. The ordinary syndicate is composed of the visitor, the Archdeacon of Calcutta, the college-council, and three persons to be nominated by the visitor for the year; the syndicate extraordinary is composed of the ordinary syndicate with the addition of such other persons as the visitor may from time to time nominate, being deeply skilled in some one at least of the Native languages professed in the college, and known to be solicitous to promote the objects for which the college-press is established. Such persons are called associate syndics, and are designated by the language or languages in which their aid may be solicited.

The following is a view of the resources of the institution. When the attention of the Incorporated Society was first drawn to the subject, they procured from His Majesty a royal letter recommending the subscriptions of his subjects to aid the object of the Society, and of the fund thus collected the Society immediately devoted £5,000 to the building and erection of the college. The Society for promoting Christian Knowledge agreed shortly after to add another sum of £5,000 in aid of the building, and the Church Missionary Society added another £5,000. The Marquis of Hastings, Governor-General of India, at the request of Bishop Middleton, presented sixty-two beeghas of ground from the eastern extremity of the Company’s botanical garden for the building and demesnes of the College, of which the first stone was accordingly laid in December, 1820. The demesnes were further increased at their eastern boundary by the free gift of a piece of ground on the banks of the Hooghly by Sir Charles Metcalfe. The British and Foreign Bible Society agreed to aid the purposes of the foundation in the department of scriptural translation by assigning a sum of £5,000 to the college for that special purpose. The Church Missionary Society also agreed to assist the Incorporated Society in defraying the current expenses of the institution by an annual sum of £1,000. Bishop Middleton presented a sum of £500 for the fitting up