* For an account of indigenous
education
in the Panjab see Leitner's Report of 1883.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
I, 327.
2 Triennial Review, pp. 33, 43; Kaye, op. cit. p. 300.
• Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, p. 33.
• Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1856-8, p. 43; Sir C. Aitchison, Lawrence, Oxford, 1892, p. 99.
## p. 94 (#130) #############################################
94 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
W
eloquent testimony to the high quality of the administrative results
which had been achieved.
Development in the areas latest acquired, the Nagpur state and
Oudh, will be dealt with more conveniently in another chapter. Here
it is sufficient to notice that as a result of the third Maratha War the
former was virtually ruled from 1818 to 1830 by the Resident at
Nagpur, Sir R. Jenkins, during the minority of the raja. His adminis-
tration was broadly on the lines followed later in the Panjab by the
Lahore regency from 1846 to 1849—the utilisation of native institu-
tions and agency under British supervision, which was mainly directed
to the removal of abuses. 1 Little change was made in the revenue
system except that triennial were substituted for the previous annual
settlements and that tenants received protection. At the end of the
minority the raja maintained Sir R. Jenkins's methods until his death
in 1853. Oudh immediately after its annexation in 1856 was placed
under a chief commissioner as a non-regulation province, and a sum-
mary settlement of land-revenue was made. 2 Under the previous rule
revenue farmers or managers, who were often also influential local
chiefs, had commonly acquired, under the designation of talukdars,
a seignorial or landlord status over village communities, and were
therefore in a position to set up a plausible claim to proprietary right.
In many cases it thus became a question whether a settlement should
be made with them or with the subordinate communities. Lord
Dalhousie, following the practice of the North-Western Provinces and
of the Panjab, decided in favour of the latter, with the result that the
talukdars were practically ousted from many of their estates, and their
consequent resentment ranged many of them against the British
Government in the great struggle of the Mutiny.
a
· R. Jenkins, Report on the Territories of the Raja of Nagpur, Calcutta, 1827, p. 299; Adm.
Rep. Cent. Provs. 1882-3, p. 14; 1911-12, p. 11.
Adm. Rep. N. -W. Prous. 1882-3, p. 34.
3 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 198 399. ; dm. Rep. Unit. Prous. 1911-12, p.
11
## p. 95 (#131) #############################################
CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
WHEN
HEN Pitt's act of 1784 extended the control of the Bengal
Government over the minor presidencies of Madras and Bombay to
all points relating to peace as well as to war, it committed the general
direction of domestic policy in British India to men who were liable
to be impressed particularly by conditions in Bengal. 1 Yet the middle
and upper classes of that province have always differed considerably
from the same classes in Upper and Western India. They contain no
martial element, and only a small minority of Muhammadans de-
scended from Central Asian stocks. While the rural masses differ little
intellectually from those in neighbouring provinces, the leading Hindu
castes, Brahmans, Kaycsthas (writers), and Vaidyas (physicians),
have always been remarkable for exceptional literary and clerical
ability. They have been quick to grasp opportunities and to assimilate
new ideas. But when Warren Hastings took charge of Bengal in 1772,
these and all other classes of society had been long depressed by con-
stant wars and tyrannical or chaotic administration. Learning of all
kinds had slunk away into the background. Hastings, however, had
entered the service of the East India Company
with the advantages of a regular classical education, and, with a mind strongly
impressed with the pleasures of literature. The common dialects of Bengal, after
his arrival in that country, soon became familiar to him; and at a period when the
use and importance of the Persian language were scarcely suspected, and when the
want of that grammatical and philological assistance which has facilitated the
labours of succeeding students rendered the attainment of it a task of peculiar
difficulty, he acquired a proficiency in it. 3
When appointed governor of Bengal, he lost no time in causing a
manual of Hindu law to be prepared in Sanskrit by Brahman pundits
and translated both into English and into Persian, the language of
the law courts established by the Moghul rulers of the province.
Approached in 1781 by some Calcutta Muhammadans with a request
for the permanent establishment of a “Madrasa” (college) where
young Muslims might acquire knowledge which would fit them for
“the numerous offices of the British Government”,3 then largely
monopolised by Hindus, he responded favourably, purchasing a site
out of his own pocket, laying the foundation stone and advising the
directors to assign "the rents of one or more villages” in the neigh-
1 It was not, for instance, until 1859 that a Bombay civil servant (Sir Bartle Frere) was
appointed to the governor-general's council (Martineau, Life of Frere, I, 295-6).
* Shore, quoted ap. Jones, Collected Works, 11, 19.
• Sharp, Selections, 1, 8.
## p. 96 (#132) #############################################
96
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
bourhood as an endowment for the new institution. The subjects of
instruction were to be the Muhammadan law and such other sciences
as were taught in Muhammadan schools. The directors accepted
Hastings's recommendations, and reimbursed him for the expense
which he had incurred. The college became known as “the Muham-
madan Madrasa" and was the first state-aided educational institution
in Bengal. Hardly had it been founded when the bench of the Calcutta
Supreme Court received a notable recruit in the person of Sir William
Jones, jurist and scholar, the first of the great Orientalists, of those
ardent enthusiasts who have done so much to spread abroad in
Europe appreciation of Asiatic culture and learning. Jones has placed
on record the "inexpressible pleasure” which he felt on approaching
the shores of India;2 and although his time was short, for he died at
Calcutta in 1794, he not only translated the laws of Manu and other
famous Sanskrit works into English, but left so deep an impression on
his Brahman friends that some could not restrain their tears when
they spoke of “the wonderful progress which he had made in the
sciences which they professed”. 3 With the strong support of Hastings,
he founded the Bengal Asiatic Society which has since numbered
among its members the great Sanskrit scholar Colebrooke, a civil
servant who rose to be a member of the governor-general's council,
and Horace Hayman Wilson, another famous Orientalist, who lived
to complete Mill's history of British India and to be librarian at the
East India House for more than twenty years. In 1792 Jonathan
Duncan, Resident at Benares, asked and obtained permission to
establish a college in the holy city for the preservation and cultivation
of the laws, literature and religion of the Hindus, stating that
although learning had always been cultivated at Benares “in numerous
private seminaries”, no public institution of the kind proposed had
ever existed. The “permanency of a college” would tend to recover
and collect gradually books still to be met (though in a very dispersed
and imperfect state) of the most ancient and valuable general learning
and tradition now existing perhaps on any part of the globe”. It
would preserve and disseminate a knowledge of the Hindu law and
become "a nursery of the future doctors and expounders thereof to
assist European judges” in administering “its genuine letter and
spirit to the body of the people”.
The British Government was sympathetic towards attempts to
revive Indian learning, but entertained no idea of introducing any
system of education. No state system then existed in England; and
even Burke, the Company's most formidable critic, did not consider
1 Hickey, Memoirs, III, 154-5.
2 Duff, Indian Missions, p. 196.
3 See the article on Jones in the Dictionary of National Biography, x, 1064-5, and Jones,
op. cit. II, 307.
* Jones, op. cit. 11, 19-28.
5 Foster, The East India House, p. 149. Cf. Memorials of Old Haileybury College, pp. 208-22.
6 Sharp, op. cit. p. 10. See also History of the Benares Sanskrit College, pp. 1-2.
و
## p. 97 (#133) #############################################
CHARLES GRANT
97
a
that either in letters, religion, commerce, or agriculture, had India
need to learn from England. 1
Among the Company's civil servants, however, there was one who
thought differently. While serving in the commercial branch from
1773 to 1790 and spending years among the people of an up-country
district of Bengal, Charles Grant became profoundly concerned at a
spectacle which presented certain distressing features, and, in con-
sultation with two friends, prepared proposals for establishing a
Protestant mission in Bengal and Bihar which he forwarded to William
Wilberforce and other Evangelical leaders at home. Retiring from
India with a fortune honestly earned, he sat down to write a treatise
entitled “Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic sub-
jects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals, and on the
means of improving it”. Soon after his return he had come into
contact with Wilberforce; and when in 1793 the Company's charter
came before parliament for renewal, that great philanthropist en-
deavoured to procure the insertion of clauses empowering the court
of directors to send to and maintain in British India "schoolmasters
and persons approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop
of London 'for the religious and moral improvement of the native
inhabitants””. The directors, however, objected that the governments
of the three presidencies could not possibly be expected to establish
missionary departments. The Indian people must be left to follow
their own systems of faith and mora's. The House of Commons agreed;
and Wilberforce temporarily abandoned his proposals, while Grant
returned to his treatise. 3 He was elected to the court of directors, and
in 1797 laid it before that body, asking for its reception as "a business
paper". In powerful and trenchant language, animated, as a Muham-
madan historian has pointed out, by the purest desire of bringing
about a “happier” state of things, he gave his impressions of social
and moral conditions among Hindus and Muhammadans in Bengal.
The evils which he enumerated, the position of women, many of whom
were doomed “to joyless confinement during life and a violent pre-
mature death”, the “perpetual abasement and unlimited subjection”
in which the lower orders of Hindus were kept by the Brahmanical
system and religion, were the results of dense and widespread ignorance
among the people, and could be removed only by education, first of
all by education in English, a key which would open to the people
"a world of new ideas”. First would come knowledge of the Chris-
tian religion which would instil new views of duty. Every branch
See his speech on Fox's East India Bill. In another passage, however, he charges his
countrymen with having erected neither churches, hospitals, palaces nor schools in India.
à Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, 1, 306, 377, 475.
• It is contained in Parl. Papers, East India, vol. x, fourth part, 1812-13, pp. 5-112, and
was reprinted by parliament twenty years later. Sec Reports, Committees, E. I. C. 1831-2 (4),
vol. viii.
• Mahmud, History, p. 8. On page 3 the historian describes it as “a most valuable essay
on the moral, intellectual and political conditions of India at that time”.
CHIVI
>
7
## p. 98 (#134) #############################################
98
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
of natural philosophy might follow in time, above all the principles of
mechanics and their application to agriculture and the useful arts.
Invention was torpid. The people needed mental quickening. Custom
was their strongest law. The path which the first passenger had marked
over the soft soil was trodden so undeviatingly in all its curves by
every succeeding passenger, that when it was perfectly beaten, it had
only the width of a single track. Even if the advantages to be derived
from the spread of Christianity were progressive and partial, they
would conduce toward the outward prosperity and internal peace of
Hindu society. The change would correct “those sad disorders which
have been described and for which no other remedy has been pro-
posed, nor is in the nature of things to be found”. Grant advised
the establishment by government of free schools for teaching English
in various parts of the province and the substitution of English for
Persian in judicial proceedings, in the administration of the revenue
and other business. He discussed political objections to his suggestions
and ended with the assertion that the English language was the best
channel for the spread of general enlightenment. By planting our
language, our knowledge, our opinions and our religion in our Asiatic
dominions we would put a great work beyond the risk of contingencies;
we would probably wed the inhabitants of those territories to this
country; but at any rate we would do an act of strict duty to them and
a lasting service to mankind. If, however, English were not employed,
the country languages might be used to spread abroad the truths of
Christianity in which all “the other proposed meliorations” were
involved.
Although no Orientalist himself, Grant greatly admired Jones's
genius and depth of learning. But his own experience of India was
not that of a scholar and a judge at headquarters. He had lived for
years among the masses in the heart of Bengal. While he was gradually
building up influence in London, an even more remarkable man was
preparing to take a hand in the affairs of that province.
In 1793 William Carey, ex-shoemaker and Baptist missionary,
arrived at Calcutta, without a licence from the directors, resolved to
preach Christianity in the native tongues at any cost. Throughout a
considerable part of the eighteenth century Lutheran missionaries in
Southern India had been looking after the schools established by the
Company for the children of the Portuguese, Tamil and Eurasian
Christians employed in their service. Free passages to India on the
Company's ships had been given to these men. Schools for Indian
boys established by Christian Swartz, a famous Lutheran mis-
sionary, were subsidised by the Madras Government with the approval
of the directors. 2 Throughout his career Swartz had enjoyed their
favour. Carey, however, his companion Thomas, and other Baptist
missionaries who subsequently joined them, were compelled to find
· Morris, Life of Grant, p. 83.
? Penny, Church in Madras, 1, 613.
## p. 99 (#135) #############################################
SERAMPUR AND DAVID HARE
99
their way to Bengal in foreign ships, and began their work oppressed
by grave financial difficulties and unsheltered by official authority,
although Carey and Thomas owed their start to George Udny, a civil
servant who eventually became member of the governor-general's
council. The missionaries finally established themselves at Serampur,
a Danish settlement sixteen miles north of Calcutta, set up schools
for European and Indian boys, started a paper manufactory and a
printing-press, and poured forth from the latter translations of the
books of the Bible into various Indian languages. Carey was a linguistic
genius and a diligent Orientalist as well as a great missionary. His
noble character and single-minded piety won friends and favour in
all quarters and deeply impressed Lord Wellesley, who appointed
him Bengali lecturer in his new college for young civil servants. His
chief coadjutors were Marshman, who had been master in a Baptist
school, and Ward, an ex-printer of Hull. So persistent was the energy
and so ardent was the spirit of these three men that in spite of many
difficulties and set-backs, they not only gained converts and attracted
pupils, but by their translations of the books of the Bible, which were
widely diffused, they assisted in laying the foundations of Bengali
prose literature. 1 Their whole enterprise, conducted with remarkable
financial ability, produced large profits which went to the common
cause.
Another pioneer in education was David Hare, a watchmaker' who
settled at Calcutta in 1800 and has been described by Lord Ronald-
shay as “one of those persons disabled by temperament from accepting
the dogma of religion but compelled by his heart to lead an essentially
Christian life”. 2 Hare was a rationalist, and in the words on his
tombstone, which is still visited by Indians on the anniversary of his
death,
adopted for his own the country of his sojourn and cheerfully devoted the remainder
of his life with unwearying zeal and benevolence to one pervading and darling
object, in which he spared no personal trouble, money or influence, viz. the educa-
tion and moral improvement of the natives of Bengal.
He studied Bengali, found it deficient for his purposes and conceived
the idea of founding a school for the instruction of young Indians in
Western literature and science.
In 1811, while Grant in England and Carey and Hare in Bengal
were searching after new courses of education, Lord Minto and his
colleagues, who included the great Sanskrit scholar Colebrooke, were
attributing the evils of the time to the decay of the indigenous learning
of the country. The government was already spending money on the
maintenance of students of Sanskrit learning at Nuddea and on the
support of the Hindu College at Benares. More money, they said, was
· Marshman, Carey, Marshman and Ward; Bishop Whitehead, Indian Problems, p. 144; and
Thompson, Rabindranath Tagore, p. 6.
• Heart of Aryavarla, pp. 17-18.
7-2
## p. 100 (#136) ############################################
100 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
required for each, and more colleges must be established for the en-
couragement of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic literature. The Muham-
madan Madrasa at Calcutta must be reformed. Some additional
expense should be incurred with a view to a “restoration of learning”.
Minto had been personally generous to the Serampur Press, and his
government subscribed 10,000 rupees to assist the printing of the
Scriptures in the Malay language; but such education as was goin;
on in India was almost entirely independent of their patronage. In
the background there were teachers and schools in no small number
not only in Bengal but also in other provinces. Illuminating informa-
tion on this subject is contained in the reports of William
Adam on
vernacular education in Bengal and Bihar and may be summarised
before we go farther, for conditions in the capital province were
roughly similar to conditions elsewhere. 3
Indigenous education was private or public, elementary or higher,
administered at home to boys and exceedingly rarely to girls, or
administered to boys alone in schools which, in spite of serious defects,
were maintained and managed by the people themselves. In Bengal
and Bihar the rudiments of learning were taught in patshalas by school-
masters who generally belonged to the Kayestha or writer caste. The
pupils were generally Kayesthas or Brahmans but sometimes belonged
to the trading or land-holding classes; they were seldom Muham-
madans. The teachers, who were poorly remunerated by presents,
fees or perquisites, sometimes employed manuscripts but never text-
books, reciting religious and mythological stories or rhymed arith-
metical rules to pupils who learnt by rote and were kept in order by
primitive methods of discipline which sometimes produced retaliation.
The patshalas were not patronised by the well-to-do, who preferred to
have their sons taught at home.
Scholastic or higher education was Persian, Arabic or Sanskrit. The
Persian schools (maktabs) were attended both by Muhammadans and
by such Hindus as were attracted by the advantages to be gained from
acquaintance with the language of the law courts. Instruction was
given in Persian literature and grammar, in penmanship and in
arithmetic. Arabic schools were either “formal” Arabic, intended
exclusively for instruction in the formal or ceremonial reading of the
Koran, or "learned” Arabic. The learned schools (madrasas) were
intimately connected with the Persian schools. The Arabic teacher
taught Persian also to his pupils. The average duration of study was
eleven or twelve years, and the students might be either boys or men.
The courses, varying from one school to another, included rhetoric,
logic, grammar, Muhammadan law, Euclid, branches of natural
1 Lord Minto in India, pp. 71--2.
• Dated 1835-6-8. Copious extracts are quoted by Duff in an article on "Indigenous
education in Bengal and Bihar”, Calcutta Review, 1844. See also Adam, Reports, Long, 1868.
* For an account of indigenous education in the Panjab see Leitner's Report of 1883.
• Adam, op. cit. pp. 19-20.
>
## p. 101 (#137) ############################################
INDIGENOUS SCHOOLS
1ο1
a
philosophy and the perusal of treatises on metaphysics. There was no
particular system of organisation or discipline. The teachers were
remunerated by presents, fees and other means, at low rates. Printed
books were not to be seen, but manuscripts were in constant use. In
Bengal and Bihar there were no Urdu schools for Muslims corre-
sponding to the Bengali and Hindu schools for the Hindus.
In the Sanskrit academies (tôls) the Hindu religion, philosophies,
law and logic, were taught to pupils who were mostly Brahmans but
sometimes belonged to the Vaidya or physician caste. Some tóls were
endowed, but most were established by individual Brahmans who
were known as gurus (teachers). A guru would proclaim himself ready
to instruct in a particular branch of learning and would gather round
him a band of disciples (chelas) whom he would teach in his own house,
or a friend's house, or a school-house, or in the open air after the
fashion of ancient India. 1 His remuneration would not be fecs but
gifts from admirers, or pupils or parents of pupils. The pupils had
previously been taught at home to read, write and do small sums.
There were larger tóls for the inculcation of particular branches of
Sanskrit learning, either medical, philosophical, mythological, astro-
logical, Tantric or Vedantic, where the courses of study occupied
years.
Of the gurus Adam drew a vivid picture:2
I saw men not only unpretending, but plain and simple in their manners, and
though seldom, if ever, offensively coarse, yet reminding me of the very humblest
classes of English and Scottish peasantry, living constantly half-naked, inhabiting
huts which if we connect moral consequences with physical causes, might be sup-
posed to have thc cffect of stunting the growth of their minds, or in which only the
most contracted minds might be supposed to have room to dwell--and yet several
of these men are adepts in the subtleties of the profoundest grammar of what is
probably the most philosophical language in cxistence; not only practically skilled
in all the niceties of its usage, but also in the principles of its structure; familiar
with all the varieties and applications of their natural laws and literature, and
indulging in the abstrusest and most interesting disquisitions in logical and ethical
philosophy. They are in general shrewd, discriminating and mild in their
demeanour.
There were no schools for girls; but land-holders sometimes in-
structed their daughters in writing and accounts with a view to
rendering them less helpless in the event of early widowhood. It was
difficult, however, to obtain from any land-holder an admission that
his daughter was literate.
"A feeling", writes Adam, "is alleged to exist in the majority of Hindu females,
principally cherisued by the women and not discouraged by the men, that a girl
taught to write and read will soon aſter marriage become a widow, an event which
is regarded as nearly the worst misfortune that can befall the sex, and the belief is
“The study of Sanskrit grammar", Adam observes, “occupies about seven years,
lexicology about two, literature about ten, logic about thirteen, and mythology about four. "
Trevelyan, Education of the People of India, p. 109.
Adam, op. cit. p. 119. He says that “the Pundits are of all ages, from twenty-five to
cighty-two".
## p. 102 (#138) ############################################
IQ2
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
>
also generally entertained that intrigue is facilitated by a knowledge of letters on
the part of females. . . . The Muhammadans participate in all the prejudices of
Hindus against the instruction of their female offspring, besides that a large majority
of them are in the very lowest grade of poverty, and are thus unable if they were
willing to give education to their children. "1
If, however, there was extremely little education of girls in either of
the two great communities, the education of boys of particular classes
was considered eminently desirable by the learned classes of both, and
its mainly religious character was often emphasised by a preliminary
ceremony or act of worship. 2 Except, however, for simple arithmetic
and ability to read and write, it was directed to teaching Sanskrit to
Hindus and Persian or Arabic to Muhammadans; the masses were
for the most part, by general consent, consigned to ignorance, the
prejudice against their instruction being “nearly as strong and as
general in their own minds as in the minds of others”. 3 There was
no promise of progress; and a new school of Hindus was springing up
in Calcutta who were longing to escape from time-honoured restraints
and long-standing evils. The boldest of these was a Brahman named
Ram Mohan Roy, who burst out with a scathing denunciation of the
popular Hinduism of his day:
I have never ceased to contemplate with the strongest feelings of regret the
obstinate system of idolatry, inducing, for the sake of propitiating supposed deities,
the violation of humane and social feelings. And this in various instances, but more
especially in the dreadful acts of self-immolation and the immolation of the nearest
relations, under the delusion of conforming to sacred religious rites. 4
When in 1813 the East India Company's charter came once more
before parliament for consideration, Minto's views regarding educa-
tion were laid before the Commons. Wilberforce and Grant then sat
in the House. Both belonged to the famous Clapham brotherhood;
and Grant's influence was strong on the court of directors. Speaking
at great length and quoting from Grant's Observations, but now dis-
carding all notion of government missionary establishments, Wilber-
force said that mission work must be left to "the spontaneous zeal of
individual Christians controuled by the discretion of the government”.
There was no idea of proceeding by “methods of compulsion and
authority”. But mission work should not be substantially and in
effect prevented. Parliament should "lay the ground for the promo-
tion of education and the diffusion of useful knowledge”. Christianity
was the appropriate remedy for evils which he enumerated. The way
for its reception should be made straight. 5 Moved largely by his
forcible pleading, parliament declared that such measures ought to
be adopted as might lead to "the introduction into India of useful
knowledge and religious and moral improvements", and transferred
the ultimate power of licensing persons desirous of proceeding to that
1 Adam, op. cit. p. 132.
2 Calcutta Review, 1867, XLV, 420.
3 Adam, op. cit. p. 254.
4 Quoted ap. Anderson and Subedar, p. 17.
6 Hansard, 1813, xxvi, 832, 853, 1071, 1076.
1
## p. 103 (#139) ############################################
CHARTER ACT OF 1813
103
country “for the purpose of accomplishing these benevolent designs”
from the directors to the Board of Control, stipulating that the
authority of the local governments respecting the intercourse of
Europeans with the interior of the country should be preserved, and
that the principles of the British Government on which the natives of
India had always relied for the free exercise of their religion “must
be inviolably maintained”. At a late stage of the debates à clause
was added which allowed the governor-general to direct that out of
the territorial rents, revenue and profits of British India, after de-
fraying the expenses of the military, civil and commercial establish-
ments and meeting the interest of the debt, "a sum of not less than
one lakh of rupees” should be set apart and applied to
the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned
natives of India and for the introduction or promotion of a knowledge of the
sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India.
The author of this clause was "Bobus" Smith who had been advocate-
general in Calcutta. 1 His draft, slightly modified by the president of
the Board of Control, passed through parliament without opposition.
It is perfectly clear that by “the sciences" he meant Western sciences.
As the directors said, addressing the governor-general on 3 June, 1814,
the clause presented two distinct propositions for consideration. They
went on, however, to give vague and inconclusive instructions.
Learned Hindus should be left to continue their custom of teaching
in their homes and should be stimulated by honorary marks of dis-
tinction and pecuniary assistance. There were Sanskrit tracts on the
virtues of plants and drugs which might prove useful to the European
practitioner; and there were treatises on astronomy and mathematics
which, although they might not add new light to European science,
might become
links of communication between the natives and the gentlemen in our service, who
are attached to the Observatory and the department of engineers, and by such
intercourse the natives might gradually be led to adopt modern improvements in
those and other sciences. '
The self-supporting character of the indigenous schools attracted
warm approbation, and the teachers were recommended to the
protection" of the government. Enquiries were made as to their
present state. The governor-general was asked to submit for con-
sideration any plan calculated to promote the object in view. But the
instructions were hazy, and the governor-general's mind was more
scriously occupied by the Nepalese, Pindari and Maratha wars. So
beyond writing a minute in favour of improving indigenous education,
and patronising a Calcutta textbook society to supply the wants of
1 Cf. Hickey, op. cit. iv, 275.
* Hansard, XXVI, 1087-8, Bills Public (2), Sessions 24 November-22 July, 1812-13 (11),
p. 1197; Howell, Education in British India, pp; 4,5; Mill and Wilson, History of British India,
VII, 397.
3 Sharp, op. cit. 1, 24.
兰
## p. 104 (#140) ############################################
104 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
a growing circle of schools, Lord Hastings did little. The society owed
its origin to a pamphlet published by Marshman, the Serampur
missionary, 1 and was very liberally supported by the European com-
munity of Calcutta.
More missionaries, representing various societies, opened more
schools. David Hare persuaded Sir Hyde East, Chief Justice, and
other leading Europeans and Indians to establish a college for the
tuition of sons of “respectable” Hindu parents in the English and
Indian languages and in European and Asiatic science and literature.
The college was first known as the Vidyalaya (home of learning), and
afterwards as the Hindu College; finally it became “the Presidency
College”. Its teaching encouraged free thought in religion with
results which were not altogether happy. 2 In establishing it Hare was
assisted by Ram Mohan Roy, a Kulin Brahman, who has been called
by a distinguished Bengali3 “the first brilliant product of European
influence in India”. Born in 1772 of a well-to-do family, he was
deeply read in Sanskrit and possessed some acquaintance with Persian
and Arabic. In 1790 he published a pamphlet condemning the
“idolatrous religion of the Hindus”, which must, he urged, be re-
stored to its original purity. He laid before his countrymen “genuine
translations of parts of their scripture, which inculcated not only the
enlightened worship ofone God, but the purest principles of morality”.
In 1805 he entered the Company's service, and, assisted by John
Digby, acquired a wide knowledge of English literature. 4 On retiring
from government service in 1814, he settled in Calcutta and devoted
himself to the cause of social, religious and educational reform. In
1818 he began a vigorous campaign against sati, and later, supported
by others, he struck a shrewd blow in the cause of Western education.
Before Lord Hastings's departure in 1823, grants had been given by
the government to two societies formed to promote vernacular educa-
tion and improve the indigenous schools; 5 and afterwards, a “Com-
mittee of Public Instruction” composed of civil servants, with
Horace Hayman Wilson, the Orientalist, as secretary, was appointed
6
1 Howell, op. cit. p. 12; Mahmud, op. cit. p. 25; Twelve Indian Statesmen, p. 230; Marshman,
op. cit. pp. 278-9.
2 See the evidence of J. W. Sherer, 19 July, 1832, paras. 1915-2252, Minutes of Evidence
before Select Committee, 1, Report Committees, E. I. C. 1831-2 (5), vol. Ix; also the Heart of
Aryavarta, p. 46.
Dutt, Literature of Bengal, pp. 137, 139, 147:
• Originally he had conceived a strong aversion to British rule in India but afterwards
gave up" this prejudice" on the conviction that British rule would conduce“more speedily
and surely to the amelioration of his countrymen". See Max Müller's quotation, Bio-
graphical Essay, p: 47:
The School-book and School Societies. The latter was guided by a managing com-
mittee of sixteen Europeans and eight Indians. David Hare was secretary. It distributed
books and examined and superintended certain schools.
6 Howell, op. cit. p. 14. The committee were bidden to suggest such measures as it might
appear expedient to adopt, with a view to “the better instruction of the people, and the
introduction of useful knowledge, including the arts and sciences of Europe". See History
of the benares Sanskrit College, pp. 50-3.
## p. 105 (#141) ############################################
RAM MOHAN ROY
105
>
by Adam, Hastings's temporary successor, and entrusted with the
disbursement of the greater part of the annual one lakh grant. Arrears
were paid in; and the committee prepared to organise a Sanskrit
College which the government had decided to open in Calcutta.
A college on Western lines was being gradually established by the
Serampur missionaries, under the patronage of the king of Denmark
and the governor-general, “for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian
and other youths in Western literature and European science", while
“Bishop's College”, another missionary institution, had been founded
at Calcutta in 1820 by means of subscriptions raised in England. 1 In
1823 a college had been founded and endowed liberally at Agra by
a certain pandit Gangadhar without any pecuniary assistance from
the government. Progress was in the air; but hardly had the members
of the new committee assembled when they were called on to consider
a petition, addressed to Lord Amherst, by Ram Mohan Roy. Its most
notable passages were these:
“When this seminary of learning”. (the new Sanskrit College) “was proposed,
we understood that the government in England had ordered a considerable sum
of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We were
filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European
gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics,
natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences which the nations
of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the
inhabitants of other parts of the world. . . . We now find that the government are
establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindoo pundits to impart such knowledge as
is already current in India. . . . The pupils will here acquire what was known two
thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtilties since produced
by speculative men, such as is commonly taught in all parts of India. The Sanskrit
language, so difficult that almost a lifetime is necessary for its perfect acquisition,
is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of know-
ledge; and the Icarning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from
sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it. If it had been intended to keep the
British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not
have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best
calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of
education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such
had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native
population is the object of the government, it will consequently promote a more
liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural
philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be
accomplished with the sum proposed, by employing a few gentlemen of talents and
learning educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with the necessary
books, instruments and other apparatus. '
It does not appear that this petition produced any immediate im-
pression, but it certainly bore fruit later on.
There were other progressive Indians who thought with Ram
Mohan Roy. Bishop Heber's journals and correspondence throw con-
siderable light on currents of opinion at this time. In a letter dated
Calcutta, October, 1823, he remarked on the friendly atticude of
1 Whitehead, op. cit. pp. 166–7.
2 Sharp, op. cit. pp. 99-101.
## p. 106 (#142) ############################################
106 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
>
Hindus and Muhammadans towards mission schools, which, however,
were very rarely attended by Muslim children. No objection was
made to the use of the Bible as a class-book provided that the teachers
did not urge their pupils to eat what would break their caste, or be
baptised, or “curse their country's gods”. Twenty schools had re-
cently been established by Church of England missionaries. In
December, 1823, he observed the increasing tendency “to imitate the
English in everything”. This had already led to important results and
would lead to still more important results in future. Many wealthy
Indians spoke English fluently and were tolerably read in English
literature. In the Bengali papers, of which there were two or three,
politics were canvassed with a bias to Whiggism. Among the lower
orders the same feeling was visible in a growing neglect of caste, and
in an anxiety to learn and speak English, which, if properly encouraged,
might in fifty years "make our language what Oordoo (Hindustani)
is at present” 2 In 1824 Heber visited the Benares Sanskrit College,
and after attending a lecture on astronomy wondered that such
rubbish should be taught in a government college. 3
The Committee of Public Instruction started with a credit of arrears
of the government grant, but even so, suffered from narrowness of
means. In the year 1824 the sum which could be spared for the Bengal
Presidency was only £19,970. Thuy decided to spend their money
“on the best means of improving the education of the more re-
spectable members of Indian society especially those who make
letters their profession? ”. This they attempted to do by ignoring the
indigenous schools and by printing in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic,
both original works and translations of such books as Hutton's
Mathematics, Croker's Land Surveying and Bridge's Algebra. They
further provided “literary endowments” for promising students
of Indian classical literature, attached English classes to certain
Orientalist colleges and started a few schools for teaching English.
In fact they endeavoured to carry out the vague monitions of the
directors, but soon found their path beset by eager applicants for the
means of instruction in English. The situation has been described in
these words by Charles Trevelyan, a young civil servant, one of their
number who subsequently rose to high distinction:
Upwards of 31,000 English books were sold by the school-book society in the
course of two years while the committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit
volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months,
to say nothing of the printing expenses. . . . Among other signs of the times a petition
was presented to the committee by a number of young men who had been brought
up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically representing that, notwithstanding the long
and elaborate course of study which they had gone through, they had little prospect
of bettering their condition; that the indifference with which they were generally
1 The first Bengali newspaper--the Samachar Darpan (mirror of news)—was issued from
the Serampur Press on 31 May, 1818 (Marshman, op. cit
. pp. 280–1).
? Heber, Narrative and Letters, 11, 306–7.
3 Idem, 1, 295-6.
>
## p. 107 (#143) ############################################
THE ORIENTALIST CONTROVERSY
107
regarded by their countrymen left them no hope of assistance from them, and that
they therefore trusted that the government, which had made them what they were,
would not abandon them to destitution and neglect. The English classes which had
been tacked on to the Sanskrit and other oriental colleges had entirely failed in
their object. The boys had not time to go through an English in addition to an
oriental, course; and the study which was secondary was naturally neglected. The
translations into Arabic, also, appeared to have made as little impression upon the
few who knew that language, as upon the mass of the people who were entirely
unacquainted with it. 1
Faced with such representations, the committee split into halves,
the Orientalist and older party and the English, or younger, party.
The first wished to continue the policy of “letting the natives pursue
their present course of instruction, and of endeavouring to engraft
European science thereon". The second desired to spend no more
money on bounties to students of the Indian classical languages or
on printing Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian books, but to devote all
available funds to conveying to Indians, through the medium of
English, the literary and scientific information necessary for a liberal
education. Although for some time the knowledge so conveyed would
be confined to a limited circle, it would soon penetrate to the outer
community through the channel of a new vernacular literature. This
doctrine became famous as “the filtration theory”.
2 Triennial Review, pp. 33, 43; Kaye, op. cit. p. 300.
• Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, p. 33.
• Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1856-8, p. 43; Sir C. Aitchison, Lawrence, Oxford, 1892, p. 99.
## p. 94 (#130) #############################################
94 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
W
eloquent testimony to the high quality of the administrative results
which had been achieved.
Development in the areas latest acquired, the Nagpur state and
Oudh, will be dealt with more conveniently in another chapter. Here
it is sufficient to notice that as a result of the third Maratha War the
former was virtually ruled from 1818 to 1830 by the Resident at
Nagpur, Sir R. Jenkins, during the minority of the raja. His adminis-
tration was broadly on the lines followed later in the Panjab by the
Lahore regency from 1846 to 1849—the utilisation of native institu-
tions and agency under British supervision, which was mainly directed
to the removal of abuses. 1 Little change was made in the revenue
system except that triennial were substituted for the previous annual
settlements and that tenants received protection. At the end of the
minority the raja maintained Sir R. Jenkins's methods until his death
in 1853. Oudh immediately after its annexation in 1856 was placed
under a chief commissioner as a non-regulation province, and a sum-
mary settlement of land-revenue was made. 2 Under the previous rule
revenue farmers or managers, who were often also influential local
chiefs, had commonly acquired, under the designation of talukdars,
a seignorial or landlord status over village communities, and were
therefore in a position to set up a plausible claim to proprietary right.
In many cases it thus became a question whether a settlement should
be made with them or with the subordinate communities. Lord
Dalhousie, following the practice of the North-Western Provinces and
of the Panjab, decided in favour of the latter, with the result that the
talukdars were practically ousted from many of their estates, and their
consequent resentment ranged many of them against the British
Government in the great struggle of the Mutiny.
a
· R. Jenkins, Report on the Territories of the Raja of Nagpur, Calcutta, 1827, p. 299; Adm.
Rep. Cent. Provs. 1882-3, p. 14; 1911-12, p. 11.
Adm. Rep. N. -W. Prous. 1882-3, p. 34.
3 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 198 399. ; dm. Rep. Unit. Prous. 1911-12, p.
11
## p. 95 (#131) #############################################
CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
WHEN
HEN Pitt's act of 1784 extended the control of the Bengal
Government over the minor presidencies of Madras and Bombay to
all points relating to peace as well as to war, it committed the general
direction of domestic policy in British India to men who were liable
to be impressed particularly by conditions in Bengal. 1 Yet the middle
and upper classes of that province have always differed considerably
from the same classes in Upper and Western India. They contain no
martial element, and only a small minority of Muhammadans de-
scended from Central Asian stocks. While the rural masses differ little
intellectually from those in neighbouring provinces, the leading Hindu
castes, Brahmans, Kaycsthas (writers), and Vaidyas (physicians),
have always been remarkable for exceptional literary and clerical
ability. They have been quick to grasp opportunities and to assimilate
new ideas. But when Warren Hastings took charge of Bengal in 1772,
these and all other classes of society had been long depressed by con-
stant wars and tyrannical or chaotic administration. Learning of all
kinds had slunk away into the background. Hastings, however, had
entered the service of the East India Company
with the advantages of a regular classical education, and, with a mind strongly
impressed with the pleasures of literature. The common dialects of Bengal, after
his arrival in that country, soon became familiar to him; and at a period when the
use and importance of the Persian language were scarcely suspected, and when the
want of that grammatical and philological assistance which has facilitated the
labours of succeeding students rendered the attainment of it a task of peculiar
difficulty, he acquired a proficiency in it. 3
When appointed governor of Bengal, he lost no time in causing a
manual of Hindu law to be prepared in Sanskrit by Brahman pundits
and translated both into English and into Persian, the language of
the law courts established by the Moghul rulers of the province.
Approached in 1781 by some Calcutta Muhammadans with a request
for the permanent establishment of a “Madrasa” (college) where
young Muslims might acquire knowledge which would fit them for
“the numerous offices of the British Government”,3 then largely
monopolised by Hindus, he responded favourably, purchasing a site
out of his own pocket, laying the foundation stone and advising the
directors to assign "the rents of one or more villages” in the neigh-
1 It was not, for instance, until 1859 that a Bombay civil servant (Sir Bartle Frere) was
appointed to the governor-general's council (Martineau, Life of Frere, I, 295-6).
* Shore, quoted ap. Jones, Collected Works, 11, 19.
• Sharp, Selections, 1, 8.
## p. 96 (#132) #############################################
96
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
bourhood as an endowment for the new institution. The subjects of
instruction were to be the Muhammadan law and such other sciences
as were taught in Muhammadan schools. The directors accepted
Hastings's recommendations, and reimbursed him for the expense
which he had incurred. The college became known as “the Muham-
madan Madrasa" and was the first state-aided educational institution
in Bengal. Hardly had it been founded when the bench of the Calcutta
Supreme Court received a notable recruit in the person of Sir William
Jones, jurist and scholar, the first of the great Orientalists, of those
ardent enthusiasts who have done so much to spread abroad in
Europe appreciation of Asiatic culture and learning. Jones has placed
on record the "inexpressible pleasure” which he felt on approaching
the shores of India;2 and although his time was short, for he died at
Calcutta in 1794, he not only translated the laws of Manu and other
famous Sanskrit works into English, but left so deep an impression on
his Brahman friends that some could not restrain their tears when
they spoke of “the wonderful progress which he had made in the
sciences which they professed”. 3 With the strong support of Hastings,
he founded the Bengal Asiatic Society which has since numbered
among its members the great Sanskrit scholar Colebrooke, a civil
servant who rose to be a member of the governor-general's council,
and Horace Hayman Wilson, another famous Orientalist, who lived
to complete Mill's history of British India and to be librarian at the
East India House for more than twenty years. In 1792 Jonathan
Duncan, Resident at Benares, asked and obtained permission to
establish a college in the holy city for the preservation and cultivation
of the laws, literature and religion of the Hindus, stating that
although learning had always been cultivated at Benares “in numerous
private seminaries”, no public institution of the kind proposed had
ever existed. The “permanency of a college” would tend to recover
and collect gradually books still to be met (though in a very dispersed
and imperfect state) of the most ancient and valuable general learning
and tradition now existing perhaps on any part of the globe”. It
would preserve and disseminate a knowledge of the Hindu law and
become "a nursery of the future doctors and expounders thereof to
assist European judges” in administering “its genuine letter and
spirit to the body of the people”.
The British Government was sympathetic towards attempts to
revive Indian learning, but entertained no idea of introducing any
system of education. No state system then existed in England; and
even Burke, the Company's most formidable critic, did not consider
1 Hickey, Memoirs, III, 154-5.
2 Duff, Indian Missions, p. 196.
3 See the article on Jones in the Dictionary of National Biography, x, 1064-5, and Jones,
op. cit. II, 307.
* Jones, op. cit. 11, 19-28.
5 Foster, The East India House, p. 149. Cf. Memorials of Old Haileybury College, pp. 208-22.
6 Sharp, op. cit. p. 10. See also History of the Benares Sanskrit College, pp. 1-2.
و
## p. 97 (#133) #############################################
CHARLES GRANT
97
a
that either in letters, religion, commerce, or agriculture, had India
need to learn from England. 1
Among the Company's civil servants, however, there was one who
thought differently. While serving in the commercial branch from
1773 to 1790 and spending years among the people of an up-country
district of Bengal, Charles Grant became profoundly concerned at a
spectacle which presented certain distressing features, and, in con-
sultation with two friends, prepared proposals for establishing a
Protestant mission in Bengal and Bihar which he forwarded to William
Wilberforce and other Evangelical leaders at home. Retiring from
India with a fortune honestly earned, he sat down to write a treatise
entitled “Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic sub-
jects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals, and on the
means of improving it”. Soon after his return he had come into
contact with Wilberforce; and when in 1793 the Company's charter
came before parliament for renewal, that great philanthropist en-
deavoured to procure the insertion of clauses empowering the court
of directors to send to and maintain in British India "schoolmasters
and persons approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop
of London 'for the religious and moral improvement of the native
inhabitants””. The directors, however, objected that the governments
of the three presidencies could not possibly be expected to establish
missionary departments. The Indian people must be left to follow
their own systems of faith and mora's. The House of Commons agreed;
and Wilberforce temporarily abandoned his proposals, while Grant
returned to his treatise. 3 He was elected to the court of directors, and
in 1797 laid it before that body, asking for its reception as "a business
paper". In powerful and trenchant language, animated, as a Muham-
madan historian has pointed out, by the purest desire of bringing
about a “happier” state of things, he gave his impressions of social
and moral conditions among Hindus and Muhammadans in Bengal.
The evils which he enumerated, the position of women, many of whom
were doomed “to joyless confinement during life and a violent pre-
mature death”, the “perpetual abasement and unlimited subjection”
in which the lower orders of Hindus were kept by the Brahmanical
system and religion, were the results of dense and widespread ignorance
among the people, and could be removed only by education, first of
all by education in English, a key which would open to the people
"a world of new ideas”. First would come knowledge of the Chris-
tian religion which would instil new views of duty. Every branch
See his speech on Fox's East India Bill. In another passage, however, he charges his
countrymen with having erected neither churches, hospitals, palaces nor schools in India.
à Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, 1, 306, 377, 475.
• It is contained in Parl. Papers, East India, vol. x, fourth part, 1812-13, pp. 5-112, and
was reprinted by parliament twenty years later. Sec Reports, Committees, E. I. C. 1831-2 (4),
vol. viii.
• Mahmud, History, p. 8. On page 3 the historian describes it as “a most valuable essay
on the moral, intellectual and political conditions of India at that time”.
CHIVI
>
7
## p. 98 (#134) #############################################
98
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
of natural philosophy might follow in time, above all the principles of
mechanics and their application to agriculture and the useful arts.
Invention was torpid. The people needed mental quickening. Custom
was their strongest law. The path which the first passenger had marked
over the soft soil was trodden so undeviatingly in all its curves by
every succeeding passenger, that when it was perfectly beaten, it had
only the width of a single track. Even if the advantages to be derived
from the spread of Christianity were progressive and partial, they
would conduce toward the outward prosperity and internal peace of
Hindu society. The change would correct “those sad disorders which
have been described and for which no other remedy has been pro-
posed, nor is in the nature of things to be found”. Grant advised
the establishment by government of free schools for teaching English
in various parts of the province and the substitution of English for
Persian in judicial proceedings, in the administration of the revenue
and other business. He discussed political objections to his suggestions
and ended with the assertion that the English language was the best
channel for the spread of general enlightenment. By planting our
language, our knowledge, our opinions and our religion in our Asiatic
dominions we would put a great work beyond the risk of contingencies;
we would probably wed the inhabitants of those territories to this
country; but at any rate we would do an act of strict duty to them and
a lasting service to mankind. If, however, English were not employed,
the country languages might be used to spread abroad the truths of
Christianity in which all “the other proposed meliorations” were
involved.
Although no Orientalist himself, Grant greatly admired Jones's
genius and depth of learning. But his own experience of India was
not that of a scholar and a judge at headquarters. He had lived for
years among the masses in the heart of Bengal. While he was gradually
building up influence in London, an even more remarkable man was
preparing to take a hand in the affairs of that province.
In 1793 William Carey, ex-shoemaker and Baptist missionary,
arrived at Calcutta, without a licence from the directors, resolved to
preach Christianity in the native tongues at any cost. Throughout a
considerable part of the eighteenth century Lutheran missionaries in
Southern India had been looking after the schools established by the
Company for the children of the Portuguese, Tamil and Eurasian
Christians employed in their service. Free passages to India on the
Company's ships had been given to these men. Schools for Indian
boys established by Christian Swartz, a famous Lutheran mis-
sionary, were subsidised by the Madras Government with the approval
of the directors. 2 Throughout his career Swartz had enjoyed their
favour. Carey, however, his companion Thomas, and other Baptist
missionaries who subsequently joined them, were compelled to find
· Morris, Life of Grant, p. 83.
? Penny, Church in Madras, 1, 613.
## p. 99 (#135) #############################################
SERAMPUR AND DAVID HARE
99
their way to Bengal in foreign ships, and began their work oppressed
by grave financial difficulties and unsheltered by official authority,
although Carey and Thomas owed their start to George Udny, a civil
servant who eventually became member of the governor-general's
council. The missionaries finally established themselves at Serampur,
a Danish settlement sixteen miles north of Calcutta, set up schools
for European and Indian boys, started a paper manufactory and a
printing-press, and poured forth from the latter translations of the
books of the Bible into various Indian languages. Carey was a linguistic
genius and a diligent Orientalist as well as a great missionary. His
noble character and single-minded piety won friends and favour in
all quarters and deeply impressed Lord Wellesley, who appointed
him Bengali lecturer in his new college for young civil servants. His
chief coadjutors were Marshman, who had been master in a Baptist
school, and Ward, an ex-printer of Hull. So persistent was the energy
and so ardent was the spirit of these three men that in spite of many
difficulties and set-backs, they not only gained converts and attracted
pupils, but by their translations of the books of the Bible, which were
widely diffused, they assisted in laying the foundations of Bengali
prose literature. 1 Their whole enterprise, conducted with remarkable
financial ability, produced large profits which went to the common
cause.
Another pioneer in education was David Hare, a watchmaker' who
settled at Calcutta in 1800 and has been described by Lord Ronald-
shay as “one of those persons disabled by temperament from accepting
the dogma of religion but compelled by his heart to lead an essentially
Christian life”. 2 Hare was a rationalist, and in the words on his
tombstone, which is still visited by Indians on the anniversary of his
death,
adopted for his own the country of his sojourn and cheerfully devoted the remainder
of his life with unwearying zeal and benevolence to one pervading and darling
object, in which he spared no personal trouble, money or influence, viz. the educa-
tion and moral improvement of the natives of Bengal.
He studied Bengali, found it deficient for his purposes and conceived
the idea of founding a school for the instruction of young Indians in
Western literature and science.
In 1811, while Grant in England and Carey and Hare in Bengal
were searching after new courses of education, Lord Minto and his
colleagues, who included the great Sanskrit scholar Colebrooke, were
attributing the evils of the time to the decay of the indigenous learning
of the country. The government was already spending money on the
maintenance of students of Sanskrit learning at Nuddea and on the
support of the Hindu College at Benares. More money, they said, was
· Marshman, Carey, Marshman and Ward; Bishop Whitehead, Indian Problems, p. 144; and
Thompson, Rabindranath Tagore, p. 6.
• Heart of Aryavarla, pp. 17-18.
7-2
## p. 100 (#136) ############################################
100 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
required for each, and more colleges must be established for the en-
couragement of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic literature. The Muham-
madan Madrasa at Calcutta must be reformed. Some additional
expense should be incurred with a view to a “restoration of learning”.
Minto had been personally generous to the Serampur Press, and his
government subscribed 10,000 rupees to assist the printing of the
Scriptures in the Malay language; but such education as was goin;
on in India was almost entirely independent of their patronage. In
the background there were teachers and schools in no small number
not only in Bengal but also in other provinces. Illuminating informa-
tion on this subject is contained in the reports of William
Adam on
vernacular education in Bengal and Bihar and may be summarised
before we go farther, for conditions in the capital province were
roughly similar to conditions elsewhere. 3
Indigenous education was private or public, elementary or higher,
administered at home to boys and exceedingly rarely to girls, or
administered to boys alone in schools which, in spite of serious defects,
were maintained and managed by the people themselves. In Bengal
and Bihar the rudiments of learning were taught in patshalas by school-
masters who generally belonged to the Kayestha or writer caste. The
pupils were generally Kayesthas or Brahmans but sometimes belonged
to the trading or land-holding classes; they were seldom Muham-
madans. The teachers, who were poorly remunerated by presents,
fees or perquisites, sometimes employed manuscripts but never text-
books, reciting religious and mythological stories or rhymed arith-
metical rules to pupils who learnt by rote and were kept in order by
primitive methods of discipline which sometimes produced retaliation.
The patshalas were not patronised by the well-to-do, who preferred to
have their sons taught at home.
Scholastic or higher education was Persian, Arabic or Sanskrit. The
Persian schools (maktabs) were attended both by Muhammadans and
by such Hindus as were attracted by the advantages to be gained from
acquaintance with the language of the law courts. Instruction was
given in Persian literature and grammar, in penmanship and in
arithmetic. Arabic schools were either “formal” Arabic, intended
exclusively for instruction in the formal or ceremonial reading of the
Koran, or "learned” Arabic. The learned schools (madrasas) were
intimately connected with the Persian schools. The Arabic teacher
taught Persian also to his pupils. The average duration of study was
eleven or twelve years, and the students might be either boys or men.
The courses, varying from one school to another, included rhetoric,
logic, grammar, Muhammadan law, Euclid, branches of natural
1 Lord Minto in India, pp. 71--2.
• Dated 1835-6-8. Copious extracts are quoted by Duff in an article on "Indigenous
education in Bengal and Bihar”, Calcutta Review, 1844. See also Adam, Reports, Long, 1868.
* For an account of indigenous education in the Panjab see Leitner's Report of 1883.
• Adam, op. cit. pp. 19-20.
>
## p. 101 (#137) ############################################
INDIGENOUS SCHOOLS
1ο1
a
philosophy and the perusal of treatises on metaphysics. There was no
particular system of organisation or discipline. The teachers were
remunerated by presents, fees and other means, at low rates. Printed
books were not to be seen, but manuscripts were in constant use. In
Bengal and Bihar there were no Urdu schools for Muslims corre-
sponding to the Bengali and Hindu schools for the Hindus.
In the Sanskrit academies (tôls) the Hindu religion, philosophies,
law and logic, were taught to pupils who were mostly Brahmans but
sometimes belonged to the Vaidya or physician caste. Some tóls were
endowed, but most were established by individual Brahmans who
were known as gurus (teachers). A guru would proclaim himself ready
to instruct in a particular branch of learning and would gather round
him a band of disciples (chelas) whom he would teach in his own house,
or a friend's house, or a school-house, or in the open air after the
fashion of ancient India. 1 His remuneration would not be fecs but
gifts from admirers, or pupils or parents of pupils. The pupils had
previously been taught at home to read, write and do small sums.
There were larger tóls for the inculcation of particular branches of
Sanskrit learning, either medical, philosophical, mythological, astro-
logical, Tantric or Vedantic, where the courses of study occupied
years.
Of the gurus Adam drew a vivid picture:2
I saw men not only unpretending, but plain and simple in their manners, and
though seldom, if ever, offensively coarse, yet reminding me of the very humblest
classes of English and Scottish peasantry, living constantly half-naked, inhabiting
huts which if we connect moral consequences with physical causes, might be sup-
posed to have thc cffect of stunting the growth of their minds, or in which only the
most contracted minds might be supposed to have room to dwell--and yet several
of these men are adepts in the subtleties of the profoundest grammar of what is
probably the most philosophical language in cxistence; not only practically skilled
in all the niceties of its usage, but also in the principles of its structure; familiar
with all the varieties and applications of their natural laws and literature, and
indulging in the abstrusest and most interesting disquisitions in logical and ethical
philosophy. They are in general shrewd, discriminating and mild in their
demeanour.
There were no schools for girls; but land-holders sometimes in-
structed their daughters in writing and accounts with a view to
rendering them less helpless in the event of early widowhood. It was
difficult, however, to obtain from any land-holder an admission that
his daughter was literate.
"A feeling", writes Adam, "is alleged to exist in the majority of Hindu females,
principally cherisued by the women and not discouraged by the men, that a girl
taught to write and read will soon aſter marriage become a widow, an event which
is regarded as nearly the worst misfortune that can befall the sex, and the belief is
“The study of Sanskrit grammar", Adam observes, “occupies about seven years,
lexicology about two, literature about ten, logic about thirteen, and mythology about four. "
Trevelyan, Education of the People of India, p. 109.
Adam, op. cit. p. 119. He says that “the Pundits are of all ages, from twenty-five to
cighty-two".
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IQ2
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
>
also generally entertained that intrigue is facilitated by a knowledge of letters on
the part of females. . . . The Muhammadans participate in all the prejudices of
Hindus against the instruction of their female offspring, besides that a large majority
of them are in the very lowest grade of poverty, and are thus unable if they were
willing to give education to their children. "1
If, however, there was extremely little education of girls in either of
the two great communities, the education of boys of particular classes
was considered eminently desirable by the learned classes of both, and
its mainly religious character was often emphasised by a preliminary
ceremony or act of worship. 2 Except, however, for simple arithmetic
and ability to read and write, it was directed to teaching Sanskrit to
Hindus and Persian or Arabic to Muhammadans; the masses were
for the most part, by general consent, consigned to ignorance, the
prejudice against their instruction being “nearly as strong and as
general in their own minds as in the minds of others”. 3 There was
no promise of progress; and a new school of Hindus was springing up
in Calcutta who were longing to escape from time-honoured restraints
and long-standing evils. The boldest of these was a Brahman named
Ram Mohan Roy, who burst out with a scathing denunciation of the
popular Hinduism of his day:
I have never ceased to contemplate with the strongest feelings of regret the
obstinate system of idolatry, inducing, for the sake of propitiating supposed deities,
the violation of humane and social feelings. And this in various instances, but more
especially in the dreadful acts of self-immolation and the immolation of the nearest
relations, under the delusion of conforming to sacred religious rites. 4
When in 1813 the East India Company's charter came once more
before parliament for consideration, Minto's views regarding educa-
tion were laid before the Commons. Wilberforce and Grant then sat
in the House. Both belonged to the famous Clapham brotherhood;
and Grant's influence was strong on the court of directors. Speaking
at great length and quoting from Grant's Observations, but now dis-
carding all notion of government missionary establishments, Wilber-
force said that mission work must be left to "the spontaneous zeal of
individual Christians controuled by the discretion of the government”.
There was no idea of proceeding by “methods of compulsion and
authority”. But mission work should not be substantially and in
effect prevented. Parliament should "lay the ground for the promo-
tion of education and the diffusion of useful knowledge”. Christianity
was the appropriate remedy for evils which he enumerated. The way
for its reception should be made straight. 5 Moved largely by his
forcible pleading, parliament declared that such measures ought to
be adopted as might lead to "the introduction into India of useful
knowledge and religious and moral improvements", and transferred
the ultimate power of licensing persons desirous of proceeding to that
1 Adam, op. cit. p. 132.
2 Calcutta Review, 1867, XLV, 420.
3 Adam, op. cit. p. 254.
4 Quoted ap. Anderson and Subedar, p. 17.
6 Hansard, 1813, xxvi, 832, 853, 1071, 1076.
1
## p. 103 (#139) ############################################
CHARTER ACT OF 1813
103
country “for the purpose of accomplishing these benevolent designs”
from the directors to the Board of Control, stipulating that the
authority of the local governments respecting the intercourse of
Europeans with the interior of the country should be preserved, and
that the principles of the British Government on which the natives of
India had always relied for the free exercise of their religion “must
be inviolably maintained”. At a late stage of the debates à clause
was added which allowed the governor-general to direct that out of
the territorial rents, revenue and profits of British India, after de-
fraying the expenses of the military, civil and commercial establish-
ments and meeting the interest of the debt, "a sum of not less than
one lakh of rupees” should be set apart and applied to
the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned
natives of India and for the introduction or promotion of a knowledge of the
sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India.
The author of this clause was "Bobus" Smith who had been advocate-
general in Calcutta. 1 His draft, slightly modified by the president of
the Board of Control, passed through parliament without opposition.
It is perfectly clear that by “the sciences" he meant Western sciences.
As the directors said, addressing the governor-general on 3 June, 1814,
the clause presented two distinct propositions for consideration. They
went on, however, to give vague and inconclusive instructions.
Learned Hindus should be left to continue their custom of teaching
in their homes and should be stimulated by honorary marks of dis-
tinction and pecuniary assistance. There were Sanskrit tracts on the
virtues of plants and drugs which might prove useful to the European
practitioner; and there were treatises on astronomy and mathematics
which, although they might not add new light to European science,
might become
links of communication between the natives and the gentlemen in our service, who
are attached to the Observatory and the department of engineers, and by such
intercourse the natives might gradually be led to adopt modern improvements in
those and other sciences. '
The self-supporting character of the indigenous schools attracted
warm approbation, and the teachers were recommended to the
protection" of the government. Enquiries were made as to their
present state. The governor-general was asked to submit for con-
sideration any plan calculated to promote the object in view. But the
instructions were hazy, and the governor-general's mind was more
scriously occupied by the Nepalese, Pindari and Maratha wars. So
beyond writing a minute in favour of improving indigenous education,
and patronising a Calcutta textbook society to supply the wants of
1 Cf. Hickey, op. cit. iv, 275.
* Hansard, XXVI, 1087-8, Bills Public (2), Sessions 24 November-22 July, 1812-13 (11),
p. 1197; Howell, Education in British India, pp; 4,5; Mill and Wilson, History of British India,
VII, 397.
3 Sharp, op. cit. 1, 24.
兰
## p. 104 (#140) ############################################
104 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
a growing circle of schools, Lord Hastings did little. The society owed
its origin to a pamphlet published by Marshman, the Serampur
missionary, 1 and was very liberally supported by the European com-
munity of Calcutta.
More missionaries, representing various societies, opened more
schools. David Hare persuaded Sir Hyde East, Chief Justice, and
other leading Europeans and Indians to establish a college for the
tuition of sons of “respectable” Hindu parents in the English and
Indian languages and in European and Asiatic science and literature.
The college was first known as the Vidyalaya (home of learning), and
afterwards as the Hindu College; finally it became “the Presidency
College”. Its teaching encouraged free thought in religion with
results which were not altogether happy. 2 In establishing it Hare was
assisted by Ram Mohan Roy, a Kulin Brahman, who has been called
by a distinguished Bengali3 “the first brilliant product of European
influence in India”. Born in 1772 of a well-to-do family, he was
deeply read in Sanskrit and possessed some acquaintance with Persian
and Arabic. In 1790 he published a pamphlet condemning the
“idolatrous religion of the Hindus”, which must, he urged, be re-
stored to its original purity. He laid before his countrymen “genuine
translations of parts of their scripture, which inculcated not only the
enlightened worship ofone God, but the purest principles of morality”.
In 1805 he entered the Company's service, and, assisted by John
Digby, acquired a wide knowledge of English literature. 4 On retiring
from government service in 1814, he settled in Calcutta and devoted
himself to the cause of social, religious and educational reform. In
1818 he began a vigorous campaign against sati, and later, supported
by others, he struck a shrewd blow in the cause of Western education.
Before Lord Hastings's departure in 1823, grants had been given by
the government to two societies formed to promote vernacular educa-
tion and improve the indigenous schools; 5 and afterwards, a “Com-
mittee of Public Instruction” composed of civil servants, with
Horace Hayman Wilson, the Orientalist, as secretary, was appointed
6
1 Howell, op. cit. p. 12; Mahmud, op. cit. p. 25; Twelve Indian Statesmen, p. 230; Marshman,
op. cit. pp. 278-9.
2 See the evidence of J. W. Sherer, 19 July, 1832, paras. 1915-2252, Minutes of Evidence
before Select Committee, 1, Report Committees, E. I. C. 1831-2 (5), vol. Ix; also the Heart of
Aryavarta, p. 46.
Dutt, Literature of Bengal, pp. 137, 139, 147:
• Originally he had conceived a strong aversion to British rule in India but afterwards
gave up" this prejudice" on the conviction that British rule would conduce“more speedily
and surely to the amelioration of his countrymen". See Max Müller's quotation, Bio-
graphical Essay, p: 47:
The School-book and School Societies. The latter was guided by a managing com-
mittee of sixteen Europeans and eight Indians. David Hare was secretary. It distributed
books and examined and superintended certain schools.
6 Howell, op. cit. p. 14. The committee were bidden to suggest such measures as it might
appear expedient to adopt, with a view to “the better instruction of the people, and the
introduction of useful knowledge, including the arts and sciences of Europe". See History
of the benares Sanskrit College, pp. 50-3.
## p. 105 (#141) ############################################
RAM MOHAN ROY
105
>
by Adam, Hastings's temporary successor, and entrusted with the
disbursement of the greater part of the annual one lakh grant. Arrears
were paid in; and the committee prepared to organise a Sanskrit
College which the government had decided to open in Calcutta.
A college on Western lines was being gradually established by the
Serampur missionaries, under the patronage of the king of Denmark
and the governor-general, “for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian
and other youths in Western literature and European science", while
“Bishop's College”, another missionary institution, had been founded
at Calcutta in 1820 by means of subscriptions raised in England. 1 In
1823 a college had been founded and endowed liberally at Agra by
a certain pandit Gangadhar without any pecuniary assistance from
the government. Progress was in the air; but hardly had the members
of the new committee assembled when they were called on to consider
a petition, addressed to Lord Amherst, by Ram Mohan Roy. Its most
notable passages were these:
“When this seminary of learning”. (the new Sanskrit College) “was proposed,
we understood that the government in England had ordered a considerable sum
of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We were
filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European
gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics,
natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences which the nations
of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the
inhabitants of other parts of the world. . . . We now find that the government are
establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindoo pundits to impart such knowledge as
is already current in India. . . . The pupils will here acquire what was known two
thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtilties since produced
by speculative men, such as is commonly taught in all parts of India. The Sanskrit
language, so difficult that almost a lifetime is necessary for its perfect acquisition,
is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of know-
ledge; and the Icarning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from
sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it. If it had been intended to keep the
British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not
have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best
calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of
education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such
had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native
population is the object of the government, it will consequently promote a more
liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural
philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be
accomplished with the sum proposed, by employing a few gentlemen of talents and
learning educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with the necessary
books, instruments and other apparatus. '
It does not appear that this petition produced any immediate im-
pression, but it certainly bore fruit later on.
There were other progressive Indians who thought with Ram
Mohan Roy. Bishop Heber's journals and correspondence throw con-
siderable light on currents of opinion at this time. In a letter dated
Calcutta, October, 1823, he remarked on the friendly atticude of
1 Whitehead, op. cit. pp. 166–7.
2 Sharp, op. cit. pp. 99-101.
## p. 106 (#142) ############################################
106 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
>
Hindus and Muhammadans towards mission schools, which, however,
were very rarely attended by Muslim children. No objection was
made to the use of the Bible as a class-book provided that the teachers
did not urge their pupils to eat what would break their caste, or be
baptised, or “curse their country's gods”. Twenty schools had re-
cently been established by Church of England missionaries. In
December, 1823, he observed the increasing tendency “to imitate the
English in everything”. This had already led to important results and
would lead to still more important results in future. Many wealthy
Indians spoke English fluently and were tolerably read in English
literature. In the Bengali papers, of which there were two or three,
politics were canvassed with a bias to Whiggism. Among the lower
orders the same feeling was visible in a growing neglect of caste, and
in an anxiety to learn and speak English, which, if properly encouraged,
might in fifty years "make our language what Oordoo (Hindustani)
is at present” 2 In 1824 Heber visited the Benares Sanskrit College,
and after attending a lecture on astronomy wondered that such
rubbish should be taught in a government college. 3
The Committee of Public Instruction started with a credit of arrears
of the government grant, but even so, suffered from narrowness of
means. In the year 1824 the sum which could be spared for the Bengal
Presidency was only £19,970. Thuy decided to spend their money
“on the best means of improving the education of the more re-
spectable members of Indian society especially those who make
letters their profession? ”. This they attempted to do by ignoring the
indigenous schools and by printing in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic,
both original works and translations of such books as Hutton's
Mathematics, Croker's Land Surveying and Bridge's Algebra. They
further provided “literary endowments” for promising students
of Indian classical literature, attached English classes to certain
Orientalist colleges and started a few schools for teaching English.
In fact they endeavoured to carry out the vague monitions of the
directors, but soon found their path beset by eager applicants for the
means of instruction in English. The situation has been described in
these words by Charles Trevelyan, a young civil servant, one of their
number who subsequently rose to high distinction:
Upwards of 31,000 English books were sold by the school-book society in the
course of two years while the committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit
volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months,
to say nothing of the printing expenses. . . . Among other signs of the times a petition
was presented to the committee by a number of young men who had been brought
up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically representing that, notwithstanding the long
and elaborate course of study which they had gone through, they had little prospect
of bettering their condition; that the indifference with which they were generally
1 The first Bengali newspaper--the Samachar Darpan (mirror of news)—was issued from
the Serampur Press on 31 May, 1818 (Marshman, op. cit
. pp. 280–1).
? Heber, Narrative and Letters, 11, 306–7.
3 Idem, 1, 295-6.
>
## p. 107 (#143) ############################################
THE ORIENTALIST CONTROVERSY
107
regarded by their countrymen left them no hope of assistance from them, and that
they therefore trusted that the government, which had made them what they were,
would not abandon them to destitution and neglect. The English classes which had
been tacked on to the Sanskrit and other oriental colleges had entirely failed in
their object. The boys had not time to go through an English in addition to an
oriental, course; and the study which was secondary was naturally neglected. The
translations into Arabic, also, appeared to have made as little impression upon the
few who knew that language, as upon the mass of the people who were entirely
unacquainted with it. 1
Faced with such representations, the committee split into halves,
the Orientalist and older party and the English, or younger, party.
The first wished to continue the policy of “letting the natives pursue
their present course of instruction, and of endeavouring to engraft
European science thereon". The second desired to spend no more
money on bounties to students of the Indian classical languages or
on printing Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian books, but to devote all
available funds to conveying to Indians, through the medium of
English, the literary and scientific information necessary for a liberal
education. Although for some time the knowledge so conveyed would
be confined to a limited circle, it would soon penetrate to the outer
community through the channel of a new vernacular literature. This
doctrine became famous as “the filtration theory”.
