gence in licentiousness) is permitted, but that it is enjoined by the system which they profess.” And lastly, there are Vedantic schools, in which are read the Bhagavat Gita, a celebrated episode of the Mahabharat, unfolding a curious scheme of half mythological, half philosophical rationalism; the Vedanta Sara, and other treatises expository of pantheism,—a system which, in its more ideal and spiritual, not less than its grosser forms, impiously confounds the creature with the Creator, inflates the soul with a pride vastly more towering than that of stoicism, sanctions or inculcates the popular polytheistic idolatry, enforces the abhorrent dogma of transmigration through the various forms of animate and inanimate nature, and, by authoritatively teaching that final beatitude consists in a literal immersion or absorption of the human spirit in the unfathomable abyss of the divine essence, virtually points to the atheist’s hope and the godly man’s fear—a moral and intellectual self-annihilation.
As regards the number of schools, the allowances of the teachers, the number of pupils, the period of scholastic attendance, and other details we may select, the district of Burdwan is, on the whole, the most favourable specimen. In this district there are 190 Sanskrit schools, conducted by as many learned teachers. In these schools there are 1,358 students, averaging 7-1 to each school. Of the total number, 590 are natives of the villages in which the schools are situated, and 768 natives of other villages. In respect of caste, they are thus distributed:—Brahmans, 1,296; Vaidyas, or medical students, 45; Daivajoras, a degraded class of Brahmans, 11; Vaishnavas, or followers of the god Vishnu, 6. The average age of the teachers is 45 years. In the form of presents at public assemblies, &c., the entire body of professors of learning annually receive, in all, rs. 11,960, averaging to each per annum Rs. 63-4-5. The students of one hundred and five schools receive nothing in the form of presents, or by mendicancy. Those of eighty-five schools receive rs. 391, averaging about rs. 4-9-7 annually to the students collectively of each school. The following presents, at one view, an enumeration of the studies pursued, the number of students engaged in each, the average age of commencing andc ompleting the several branches of study:—
