lias present system of education. In Ms opinion were once the centres of culture an4 learning, and the unteachability and unapproacliability as now givas out his plan as to how to revive them to their observed by the Hindus of Kerala are meaning former state of glory. The Tippani: By Pandit K. K M added to tho less and are based on no sastric principles (p. 248). The sublime nature of the temple architecture end of the book giving the substance of the and of the high moral and spiritual atmosphere numerous Vedic and Sanskiit- ciuotations, is found it helps to create are treated of in chapters twenty- to be of great use. The book itself is very attractively five to twenty-eight. In the next chapter the got2up, and we extend our hearty welcome to it, author deals elaborately with the different forms A Text-book op Geography : By P. A. oi worship such as the vaidika, tantrika and misra. He then goes on to answer some of the allegations Paramcswara Aiyctr. Printed at the B. B. Press made by the Arya samaj propagandists against the Parur {Travaneore). Pp. 108 idea of symbol worship. The author treats in the A very useful book for children of the secondary closing chapters of the book of the present miser classes to read. able state of the Hindu temples in Kerala, which P. Aotjaxt Achax.
THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY TO-DAY
By PROF. JADUNATH SARKAR
Influence of the Calcutta University on higher education in Bengal—It is a quarter truth to call the Calcutta University a teaching University. Its most extensive and lucrative activity is as an examining agency fcr the whole of Bengal (minus Dacca) and Assam. The Matriculation examination conducted by it for these two provinces brings in three lakhs of Rupees in fees (when the candidates are 20,000). The Intermediate and Bachelorship examinations (each with several thousand candidates) enrich it with several lakhs more (as the rate of fees is double and treble). An additional source of income is the sale of highly priced selections and other publications of the University which every one of the vast student population of two provinces is compelled to buy.
The Calcutta University does no teaching for these three stages of study; it merely conducts an examining agency and influences provincial education by means of the text-books and courses of study it lays down and the principles it follows in valuing answer-papers. It has no means of inspecting the High Schools from which it draws three-lakhs a year in fees alone. Patna boys have been known to have entered their names in some of the schools at Calcutta, under the very eyes of the Calcutta University, and not to have attended any class there, and yet at the end of the year they have been Gazetted as Matrics of the Calcutta University! When the matter was brought to the notice of a responsible officer of the Calcutta University, he confessed his utter helplessness to prevent the fraud.
How the Calcutta University does its work of examination.—The way in which the Calcutta University has been conducting its extremely lucrative business of examining those whom it does not teach and cannot inspect, has excited the despair of all who have the best interests of the people of Bengal and Assam at heart and the laughter and scorn of the other provinces of India. As shown in the July number of M. R., at the last Matric examination 74.4 p.c. of the candidates were declared as passed, and among them the first-classes outnumbered the third-classes as eleven to one! The academic declaration that among young Bengalis there are eleven first-rate boys to every single duffer is of the same character as the famous declarations of indulgence sold by Tetzel [Query, for Rs. 15 each?]. Luther called them “a futility and a sorrowful mockery.” The Matric is at the bottom of the scale, but the same “sorrowful mockery” has marked the M. A. examination at the top. In 1921 only three candidates had passed the M. A. in English in the first division as judged by the original examiners; but a committee sat under Sir Ashutosh Mukherji and began to give grace marks amounting to thirty (in a paper of 100 marks only), till the number of “first class Calcutta M. A.’s by the grace of Saraswati” had been artificially increased
