facts when he adopted the usual phraseology as to masses, &c. Yet a close investigation of the subject demonstrates that the analogy is incorrect and vicious. The existence of primary schools denotes that there are others of a higher order, where a superior education can be attained; but our vernacular Schools are planted down in districts where no other means of education is afforded. There are whole collectorates, such as Sholapoor, Khandesh, Kaira, and Belgaum, where the sons of the wealthy,—of the Native Judge and Collector,-as well as of the Brahmin and the poor cultivator, must seek in the Government vernacular School alone the opportunity of obtaining any better education than is offered by the village Puntoji. Moreover, those whom we have designated as the superior classes are found so equally scattered all over the country, and in remote villages, such as Toka, Wái, Trimbuck, &c. that it is apparent exactly the same classes resort to these vernacular Schools as to the English establishments. Lastly, the small means at the disposal of the Board exclude the notion of education being offered to the people at large.

26. But the Board found, when it took charge of the Government Schools, in 1840, that

Demarcation between Vernacular and English Schools too strongly drawn.

a very sharp line of demarcation had been drawn between English Schools and the vernacular. Nothing but English, and through English, was to be taught in the one; nothing but vernacular in the others. Experience has completely shown that this exclusive system is faulty. Mr. Willoughby has asked very pertinently why, when a boy is admitted into the English School, instruction in his mother tongue should cease? Colonel Jervis has pointed out repeatedly (what, however, is very obvious) the far greater ease and quickness with which information can be conveyed to a young Native, imperfectly acquainted with English, through the medium of his mother tongue.

27. The Board, moreover, has perceived (and experience has led the Council of Public In

Change of system taking place both in Bombay and Bengal.

struction in Bengal to exactly the

same conclusion) that a paramount

necessity exists for giving to all native youth who aspire to a character for scholarship a critical acquaintance with their own language. For years past, accordingly, the Board has been studious to combine the cultivation of the vernacular tongues with the study of English. The experiment has been most successful, for it has been found, as might have been expected, that the study of the two languages might be prosecuted simultaneously, without the slightest obstruction to attainments in either; and it certainly is remarkable that, of what is called vernacular education, by far the largest amount both in quantity and quality at this Presidency is to be obtained in the Elphinstone Institution, and not in a vernacular school. This fact clearly appears by the extract given in our last Report, page 4, from Principal Green's account of the acquirements obtained by a boy in his six years' passage through the English School, or rather it would so appear when the attainments of boys in our best vernacular schools are looked at, and put in juxtaposition. The conclusion to be drawn from these considerations appears to be that as the classes for whom our Schools are intended are very homogeneous in character, and not divisible into upper and lower ranks, the system of education pursued in them should be uniform also, and an opportunity be afforded to all of mastering their own language, through which all elementary instruction must be conveyed, and also of acquiring the rudiments of English, which, it is now admitted on all hands, must be the medium for superior education. 28. Sir Charles Lyell has pointed out, in one of his instructive tours in America, that popular education must ever be chiefly oral; and oral instruction is

Oral instruction must be through the Vernacular; but the advan

tages of English as an instrument of self-education pointed out.

of course most efficiently given through the mother tongue of the pupil. The Board, therefore, has always subscribed to the validity of those arguments which have been alleged in behalf of the vernacular medium for the community. It is also self-evident that our best native masters, such as Assistant Professors Bal Shástrí and Dádabhai, would be able to give the same amount of information through their own language to a class in a much shorter period, perhaps half the period, that would be necessary if they had conveyed the instruction through a foreign language, such as English. But if it is desired to produce pupils in our Schools, who, by industry, and by following the same path as their instructors, shall acquire the same amount of knowledge, and if the school period of such a class embraces so long a time as six or seven years, then it is indispensable to put within the reach of the pupil an instrument for selfeducation after leaving the school, such as the vernacular tongues cannot, and the English language can, supply. The conditions here mentioned apply to three-fourths of the vernacular Schools under the Board.

29. Closely connected with the above subject is the amount of encouragement which ought to be given to vernacular literature. The experience of the Board leads them strongly to con

Amount of encouragement to be given to Vernacular Literature.

clude that it is only in the production of elementary schoolbooks that the patronage of Government can be usefully bestowed. The Board has not been able to ascertain the amount of the large sums of money which have been uselessly spent by Government at this Presidency in the promotion of vernacular literature, but it is very large; and the unsold and unsaleable books in their own Depository is a fact of the same quality. Even in school-books it behoves the Board to use much discretion in the character

of the books to which it directs its attention, and special care must be taken not to produce works of a higher quality than are suited to the intellectual wants of the population for whom they are intended. The two excellent works of Professor DeMorgan on Arithmetic and Algebra, which were translated with so much assiduity by our late colleague, Colonel Jervis, may be cited in illustration of this remark. From inquiries made by the Board, it is doubtful whether there are a dozen masters in the vernacular schools competent to teach the Arithmetic, or one to teach the Algebra; and in all probability the Board will not be able to sell half a dozen copies of the latter work during the next twenty years. Yet, under the special orders of Government, the publication of these two works absorbed more than Rupees 7,000 of the annual grant, and this at a period when an annual deficiency had already occurred. We also fear that a compilation on Astronomy, in Gujerathi, which has been made with great pains by Principal Green assisted by Durgaram, and which the Board has published during the present year, will prove too difficult to be of service for such schools and such masters as are at present available in Gujerath.

30. The explanation of this phenomenon is on the

Fruitless efforts of Government in Veruacular Literature explained.

surface. The educated classes of India belong to two divisionsthose who resort to the classical languages of the East for their literature, and those who find it in English. To the former class, translations into the vernacular, produced in the mechanical manner which is almost alone capable of being applied when an Englishman and a Shastri undertake the work in common, are particularly distasteful; in the latter class, those who are able to understand a profound work, like DeMorgan on Algebra, seek it out in the original tongue, where they procure both the work itself and others allied to it, on much cheaper terms than the presses of India

are likely for a long period to supply, in the form of translations. The uneducated classes, on the other hand, are not yet ripe for such high subjects.

31. Having thus brought forward in prominent relief the principal educational facts which the experience of the last ten years has forced upon our notice, and which, it is believed, accord

Inability of Board to improve system without assistance from Government.

with those which have been observed in other parts of India, it may not be a matter of surprise that the Board, after a careful revision of their existing establishments, as recommended by your Lordship in Council on the 24th April 1850, came to the unanimous conclusion that no beneficial alteration in the existing system could be made without increased expenditure. In Bombay, where alone education of a superior order has been given, we see the happiest results springing from it, such as were described by our President in his Minute (paras. 15 and 16), which we handed up in our last report, and which have been painted still more graphically by a writer in the Bombay Quarterly Review, who is understood to be a gentleman practically acquainted with the details of education.* In the Mofus

sil, our schools, unsatisfactory as many of them are, have introduced great improvements in vernacular education; they have, moreover, succeeded in awakening the mind of the people to a desire for knowledge; and they have arrived at such a state as to be susceptible of almost boundless improvement at the hands of Government. To add, therefore, to the resources of the Board by closing a single school in which symptoms such as are here described display themselves, appeared to be such a fatal step of retrogression as to be wholly opposed to the main object of Government in fostering Native education; while, on the other hand, your Lordship in Council will recollect, from

Bombay Quarterly Magazine, January 1851.