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15,000,000 of people.-All the great languages of India, whether northern or southern, have their own peculiar alphabets, agreeing with that in which Sanskrit is usually written only in phonetic classification.

Besides the written languages of the proper country of the Hindus, we have the language of Ceylon spoken by a million of people; the languages of Assam, Arracan, the Tenasserim coast, and now of Pegu, all the people speaking which cannot be reckoned at fewer than two millions. All these are written languages; and the Ceylon or Cingalese, and the Mon Talain, or Pegu, have each their own peculiar alphabet. Again, we have probably not fewer Chinese subjects in our insular settlements than 80,000, speaking at least four distinct languages, although written in one character, and at least 150,000 Malays, with a written language in a borrowed alphabet, the Arabian. Within the British territories in India, there cannot be fewer in all than thirty written indigenous languages and dialects. But besides these, there are an unknown number of rude unwritten tongues. Thus, in the very centre of India, we have the extensive country of Gondwana, probably containing an area of not less than 60,000 square miles, among the highlands and jungles of which many rude languages are spoken. It is the same on the hilly north-eastern frontier, and among the tribes which wander over the forests of Pegu. Among these, we see people as remote from the ancient civilisation of the Hindus, as the tribes of the Amazon or Orinoco.

When European scholars first began to study the languages of India, finding the element of Sanskrit to exist more or less in all of them, they came at once to the conclusion, that that tongue was the basis of them all, and consequently, that at some remote and unknown time, it was the universal language of all India. This error was in accordance with another, that all India was once a single undivided empire; a thing incompatible with the state of society, and which unquestionably never existed, under native or foreign rule, until our own times.

There cannot, indeed, be a doubt but that a rude time must have been, when the languages of India were even as numerous as those of America on its discovery, or as are, in proportion to extent, those of Borneo at the present day. The real wonder is to find the Indian languages so few as they are, and many of them spoken by such numerous populations. When we advert to this fact, to the physical geography of the country, to the clear line of demarcation which exists between the different nations and languages, and to the peculiarity of the written characters in each tongue,-we shall be disposed to come to the

conclusion, that an independent and original civilisation sprang up at as many different and distinct points as there are civilised people and cultivated languages.

A few preliminary remarks may be made on the diversity of religions which prevails over India, and which is, perhaps, equal to that of languages. The religion of the great majority is that of the Bramins, divided into many sects, and still more by castes. The four primitive castes consist of priests, soldiers, merchants, and labourers, but this division is, in reality, more a matter of theory than practice, for the actual castes are countless, varying in every province. The four original castes are to be detected only in the upper valleys of the Ganges and Jumna, most probably the Indian seat of the people who spoke the Sanskrit language, and with whom originated the Hindu religion. In some parts of the south of India the soldier under his genuine Indian name has disappeared, and his place is taken by a local aristocracy, and there, the original servile caste takes a high local rank, instead of the lowest, as in the original seat of the institution of the castes. The Brahmin alone is found every where.

The followers of most of the foreign religions who have settled in India have adopted more or less of the peculiar manners and institutions of the Hindus, and are, in popular language, said to be Hinduised.' The most numerous of those are the Mahomedans, being the descendants of eastern Turks, Persians, Afghans, Arabs, converted Hindus, or crosses between the Hindus and strangers, divided among themselves into at least half a dozen religious sects. Then we have Hindus, half converted to Mahomedanism; that is, adopting Islam, but retaining not only the manners but the laws of the Hindus.

A bare enumeration of the other foreign or native religions, embracing comparatively few followers, will suffice. They consist of Jews, Christians,-being Nestorian, Syrian, Catholic, and Protestant,-Parsees, or Fireworshippers; Sikhs, or followers of Nanuk, Jains, Buddhists, and followers of Confucius. The Parsees, the Catholic and Protestant Christians, and the Chinese, are the only parties among these that have not been materially Hinduised.'

Amidst the crowd of tongues which we have enumerated the question is, which in our case, ought to be adopted as the language of intercourse and education. Sir E. Perry comes readily to the rational, and one would think inevitable conclusion, that it ought to be the language of the conquerors, - that language which is the vehicle of every kind of useful knowledge, and which, in every essential attribute, is so incomparably

superior to the most cultivated of the Indian or other Oriental languages. In this he only agrees with the high authorities of Lord William Bentinck, Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Macaulay. Some Englishmen, however, enamoured of their own Oriental proficiency, give the preference to the eastern tongues, one party adjudging it to the Hindi, because it was the popular speech of our Mahomedan predecessors, and the most widespread of the vernacular tongues; another to the Persian, because it was with these same Moslem predecessors the language of the Court, of law, and of the fisc; a third to Arabic, a foreign tongue, of complex structure and difficult attainment, strange to conquerors and conquered,- because it stands in the same relation to all Mahomedans that Latin does to Roman Catholic Christians, and Hebrew to Jews; and a fourth to Sanskrit, a dead language, for no better reason than that some unknown and unknowable thousands of years ago it was the speech of an unknown Hindu nation, and is now the vehicle of a monstrous cosmogony and of incredible superstitions.

Our predecessors, the Mahomedans, had used the Hindi for colloquial purposes; but in ordinary epistolary correspondence, in diplomacy, in the revenue, and in judicial proceedings, they employed Persian, the language which the invaders brought with them to the conquered country. This was exactly a parallel case to the use of French by the first generations of the Norman conquerors of our own country. Our well-known passion for precedent seduced us to follow their example, wholly forgetful of the different position of the parties. To our predecessors the Hindi was their mother-tongue, and in the Persian they were instructed from childhood as a necessary branch of education. We have no such advantages. We know nothing of either language before the age of eighteen or twenty. We never learn to write, either the one or the other, nor often even to read them. Our predecessors pronounced them with propriety, and spoke them grammatically, which, except in rare cases, we make no approach to.

All civilised conquerors have, when in sufficient numbers, used their own language, and never, when they could help it, had recourse to the rude dialects of the conquered. Thus Rome spread her own language over Gaul, Italy, and the Iberian peninsula, and even in Greece and in Asia Minor the Latin was sometimes substituted for the more polished Greek. We ourselves certainly do not adopt Irish in Ireland, or Welsh in Wales, in preference to English, nor do the French prefer Armorican in Brittany to their own polished language.

Mr. Macaulay has argued this question with an eloquence

and completeness, to which the only objection that can possibly be alleged is, that the engine is too powerful for the matter it has to crush. He is treating of the question of native education in a Minute in the Supreme Council of India, and says,'It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that the Parliament 'can have meant only Arabic and Sanskrit literature, that they 'never would have given the honourable appellation of a "learned native" to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of 'Newton; but they meant to designate by that name only such 'persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindus all the uses of Cusa-grass, and all the mysteries of 'absorption into the Deity. This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. To take a parallel case: suppose that the Pasha of Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge 'to the nations of Europe, but now sunk far below them, were 'to appropriate a sum for the purpose of reviving and pro'moting literature, and encouraging learned natives of Egypt, 'would any body infer that he meant the youth of his pachalic to give years to the study of hieroglyphics, to search into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiris, and to 'ascertain with all possible accuracy the ritual with which cats and onions were anciently adored? Would he be justly 'charged with inconsistency, if, instead of employing his young 'subjects in deciphering obelisks, he was to order them to be instructed in the English and French languages, and in all 'the sciences to which those languages are the chief keys?'*

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On the rudeness and poverty of the Indian languages, as well as on the absence from them of all useful knowledge, Mr. Macaulay thus expresses himself:- All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the 'natives of this part of India' (of Bengal, which are equal, if not superior, to those of the south) contain neither literary 'nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and 'rude, that until they are enriched from some other quarter it 'will not be easy to translate any valuable work in them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improve'ment of those classes of the people who have the means of pur'suing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular among them.'... I have

This and the subsequent extracts are taken from the able and enlightened work of Mr. Charles Hay Cameron, the successor of Mr. Macaulay as a member of the Supreme Council, on the Education of the Natives. London: 1853.

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'no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic, but I have done 'what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and • Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the value of 'the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who would deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.' The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language,' (English) we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any 'subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, 'when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe differ for the worse; and whether, when we can patronise sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which 'would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding-school,-history abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made up of seas of 'treacle and seas of butter.'

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Of the capacity of the Indians to learn our language, and acquire a knowledge of our literature, Mr. Macaulay speaks in a manner the most satisfactory and encouraging:- We are,' he says, 'withholding from them the learning for which they are craving, and forcing on them the mock-learning which they nauseate.' . . . There are,' he adds, in this very town,' (Calcutta) natives who are quite competent to discuss political or scientific questions with fluency and precision in the English language. I have heard the very question on which 'I am now writing discussed by native gentlemen with a liberality and intelligence which would do credit to any member of the Committee of public instruction. Indeed, it is unusual to find in the literary circles of the Continent any foreigner 'who can express himself in English with so much facility and 'correctness as we find in many Hindoos.'

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A short extract from the Essay of Sir Erskine Perry will show the rapid progress which the English language is already making among the Indians, despite the obstructions in the

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