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We are unable to state the exact number of Tuhsildaris in the eight districts, and therefore we cannot estimate accurately the number of new schools which will be established; but we will venture to say that, on an average, there are not less than six Tuhsildaris for each district, and probably seven. However take six as the number, and that will give forty-eight schools for the eight districts.

We may judge of the untouched ground, which lies open for the exertions of the Zillah and Pergunnah visitors, by the following figures:—*

In Muttra there are 9,960 towns and villages without(not having)schools.

Mynpúrí.....
Etawah

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Furruckabad... 1,845

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..... 1,880

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1,460

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Agra

1,296

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Allygurh

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Shajehanpur 2,718

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1,780-24,132, total number of villages, towns, &c.
without schools.

There would then be eight Zillah visitors and some thirty Pergunnah visitors. These officers will have to assist and encourage about 2,000 schools already existing; and besides, they are to administer persuasion, and to endeavour to diffuse education among twenty thousand towns and villages, that have no school whatever. Verily it cannot be said that their sphere is a contracted one!

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The Visitor General is to supply the subordinate agency, and to supervise the working of the whole, and to furnish an annual report on the state of education in the several districts under his charge. He will have the power of granting free admissions to the Government colleges to a certain number of the most promising youths, who come under his notice. To this office 8 covenanted Civilian has been appointed. The revenue authorities are to lend their most cordial assistance; and operations are to be conducted as much as possible in concert with them. It is clear from this that the support of

the most influential authorities is to be directed towards the furtherance of the scheme. It was represented by Mr. Fink, that native officials were likely to offer secret and indirect opposition to the spread of education among the people, inas

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• The number for Muttra (taken from the tabular appendix to Report for 1847-48) appears unintelligibly large. The number of mouzahs as given in the statistical manual, is 1,029, and the number of towns and villages inhabited and uninhabited is 1,019. If this number, viz. 9,960, should be materially wrong, as we suspect it is, a considerable diminution must be allowed in our sum total of towns and villages without schools.

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much as it was their interest to be the sole possessors of knowledge. We do not think that much apprehension need ever have been entertained on this score. A few Putwaris might perhaps offer their mite of opposition; some of them shrewdly remarked to Mr. Fink, that their occupation would be gone, when Zemindars could read and write. Even had not the revenue authorities been enjoined to render every practicable aid, the appointment of a Civil Servant would be quite sufficient to crush anything like active opposition, directly or indirectly offered. He will necessarily have had practice in revenue matters, will be conversant with the agency employed by Government, will have been habituated to controul native subordinates, and will have acquired some insight into the character of the agricultural population. The principal enemy to be striven against is a passive one, namely, the vis inertia of the people. We shall conclude this summary of the Government scheme by quoting at length the twelfth paragraph of the Resolution:"It will be observed that this scheme contemplates drawing forth the energies of the people for their own improvement, rather than actually supplying them with the means of instruction at the cost of Government. Persuasion, assistance, encouragement, are to be the means principally employed. The greatest consideration is to be shown to the feelings and prejudices of the people; and no interference is ever to be exercised, where it is not desired by those who conduct the institutions. The success of this scheme will chiefly appear in the number and character of the indigenous schools which may be established. The poor may be persuaded to combine for the support of a teacher; the rich may be encouraged to support schools for their poorer neighbours; and all the schools, that are established, may be assisted, improved, and brought forward."

Imperfect as our treatment of the various matters involved in this great question may have been, yet enough has perhaps been written to show that the primary object of this educational scheme, namely, the rousing of the people to exertion by means of their interest in the land, is the crowning point and the cornerstone of our revenue system. The agricultural population are fortunate in having thus placed before them the happiest of all motives to exertion, the adjudication and definition of their dearest rights. Fortunati nimium, sua si bona nôrint, agricola. The law can only help those who will help themselves; the Government has accorded rights, which it rests with the people themselves to preserve. That most powerful of all weapons-knowledge, limited though it be, is now offered to the landholders. Will

VILLAGE SCHOOLS, ETC. IN THE N. W. PROVINCES.

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they grasp it? Will they wield it for their own welfare? Who,
that looks upon Western Europe, can despair? From what has
been, we see what may be accomplished. Vast as are the diffi-
culties which meet us here, can they be more vast than those
which met the reformers of landed tenures, and the ministers
of education in France, Germany, Prussia, or Switzerland? In
India* the agriculturists form so large a portion of the whole.
population, and the mode, in which the land-tax is levied, does
so keenly and directly affect their daily comfort, that revenue
reforms gladden the hearts and brighten the homes of a
people, and are for ever freshly and affectionately remembered.
The deeds of the Great Moguls, their public works, their roads,
their canals, their dykes, have all but perished: a few ruins are
all that remain "to say 'here was or is :' but the revenue system
of Akbar Shah-that is not forgotten: the remembrance of it lives
in the minds of a grateful nation. So also, if vernacular edu-
cation should consolidate our revenue system, should render the
landholders themselves capable of guarding the rights assign-
ed to them at the Settlement, and of bequeathing the inheri-
tance to their children, then we may believe that, in a future
age, when the British rule may have passed away, when our
roads, canals, and colleges may have been mingled with the
dust, yet the good settlement will not be forgotten by pos
terity. It is to be devoutly hoped that those, who are entrusted
with the carrying out of this educational scheme, which may
add so much to the usefulness and stability of our fiscal ar-
rangements, will catch some portion of the spirit of those great
men, who have laboured so successfully for the agricultural
populations of Europe-of the Steins and the Hardenbergs of
the past, of the Pestalozzis, the Vehrlis, the Fellenbergs, the
Ottos of the present; and that in this, as in all other measures,
may be exhibited the feeling of the new national anthem—" God
save the People.'

In the N. W. P. out of a total population of twenty-three millions, fifteen millions are agricultural,

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ART. VII.-Raja-tarangini, Histoire des Rois du Kachmir, traduite et commentée par M. A. Troyer. Paris. 1840.

REFERENCE has been made in a former number of this Review to Kashmir, as connected with recent events, and with its political relations to the Panjab. The object of this article is to call attention to the condition and history of this lovely valley, previous to the Muhammadan conquest of India-a period, which, though not pregnant in events interesting to the lovers of modern history, may suggest various topics of useful thought, for those who are fond of exploring the obscurities of Indian affairs in the days of the Ramayan and Mahabharat.

The light thrown on the former state of India by the Mackenzie MSS., the disclosures made by Buddhist travellers, linguistic investigations, &c. shew that knowledge and civilization spread in India from North to South. The English are the only conquerors of India, who have reversed this process by proceeding from the South. The others established the chief seat of their power in or near Central India. All the great scenes recorded in those interesting epics, the Ramayan and Mahabharat, and in the beautiful dramatic writings of the Hindus, are laid in Ariavarta, or the land between the Vindhya Hills and the Panjab. And Central India, the land so fully brought to our notice in Tod's Rajasthan, was the country round which the events clustered, which told on the great destinies of India.

The information, communicated by Professor Wilson in his admirable Essay on Kashmir, and by M. Troyer, seems to indicate that the beautiful valley of Kashmir, secluded from the gaze of the world, and removed from the line of the conqueror's route, formerly served as a point d' appui for the efforts of the religious and political conquerors, who poured down on India from the plains of Ariana. Religious propagandists in India, like the monks of the middle ages, often chose for their seats such sequestered nooks: thus Tamluk on the borders of the Sunderbunds, "the holy city of Buddhism"-Parasnath, the lovely hill to the north of Burdwan, "the Sinai of the Jains "-Bali, in the Eastern Archipelago, to whose recesses the persecuted Brahmans of Java and the Eastern isles retired-with many other similar spots, were the favored nuclei, from which streams of moral and social influence flowed over different parts of the continent of India. The wonderful discoveries made of late by ethnological research and philological affinities invariably point. to the North as the focus of civilization. Ritter, the greatest geographer perhaps of the present age, considers Kashmir with

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Butan and Thibet, to be the intellectual cradle of the Hiudus, though even those places were not the primeval sources of their civilization. The Brahminical tribes, when they crossed the Hindu Kush, like the Pilgrim Fathers landing in New England, carried with them the seeds of a prior civil and religious polity, sufficient to indicate that it is vain for the votaries of Hinduism to boast of their religion having always been indigenous to the feelings and views of the masses of Indian population. They crossed the Hindu Kush, and settled as invading foreigners among the prostrate Sudras of the north of India.

As an illustration of these, and other kindred subjects, we know few books, in modern times, that are likely to prove of such utility as the work on Kashmir by Kalhana, the Pandit.

M. Troyer, the Editor of a valuable edition of this work, was formerly Secretary to the Sanskrit College of Calcutta. With the aid afforded him there by learned Pandits, he completed this translation of the Raja-tarangini from Sanskrit into French, which has been published at the expense of that useful body, the Asiatic Society of Paris. He possessed the advantage of being able to consult various eminent Pandits, who have since died, but have left few successors equal to them in historical or antiquarian lore. In fact, we think that the interests of Sanskrit literature are quite as well upheld by the Pandits of Nadiya, as by those of the Government Sanskrit College in Calcutta. Certainly the alumni of the latter institution are very deficient in historical and geographical information; and we should think the study of such a work, as the Raja-tarangini, as a part of their College course, would contribute very much to guide their minds into the channel of historical research, in which Pandits take very little interest. The Hindu mind, involved in the mysteries of metaphysics, treated with contempt historical studies, as conversant only with the shadows of time-Máyá, while the learned aimed at the abstractions of pure psychological truth. At the same time they were singularly inconsistent in being so attached to poetry;-for even their Dictionaries and codes of Law are indited in verse. In the dearth of Sanskrit historical works, these beautiful mirrors of Indian life, the Sanskrit Dramas, which Professor Wilson has brought so effectively before the world, afford us valuable hints on various points, connected with Hindu society -the manners of a court-the liberty allowed to females, &c. ; while, in the beauty and richness of their similes and imagery, the knowledge shewn of human nature and human passions, they may rank with the productions of Alfieri, Racine, Calderon, Goethe, or even of our own Shakespeare.

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