46 Address. [Fet?. 



furtherance of that object. Pandit Mahes Chandra Nyayaratna was ac- 

 cordingly placed on special duty for three months, during which he visited 

 all the chief centres of Sanskrit learning in Bengal, Behar and Orissa ; and 

 he has now submitted a report which will, I hope, soon be made public, and 

 which gives many interesting details, hitherto unpublished, regarding 

 the constitution of the tols, the course of studies pursued in them, and 

 the special characteristics which distinguish them in different parts of 

 the province. A full account is also given of the various institutions, re- 

 lio-ious or secular, which have been locally established in recent years for 

 the promotion of Sanskrit study ; of the Sanskrit schools maintained by 

 these associations as well as by individual patrons of learning ; of the 

 examinations conducted by them, either independently or in subordina- 

 tion to the Sanskrit Title examination, held annually by Government in 

 Calcutta and other centres for the award of Sanskrit titles to the stu- 

 dents of tols ; and of the effect of such examinations in maintaining and 

 stimulating the study of Sanskrit. The following extract from the 

 report will be of interest, as showing the causes that have led to the de- 

 cline of the tols : — 



" The old custom of sons pursuing the calling of the father, which 

 made pandits' sons grow up to be pandits, unless they happened to 

 lack the mental power to do so, is losing its hold upon the country, and 

 pandits' sons arc accordingly being trained up for secular callings that 

 promise better prospects from a worldly point of view than the calling 

 of a pandit. Thus it is that families of pandits in Bengal have all 

 been tendino- to assimilate themselves to the other Brahman families 

 of the province, i. e., have all been tending towards secular call ings 

 that hold out prospects of pecuniary gain. Most of the best pandits 

 of Bengal, all the Mahamahopadhyayas without exception, have trained 

 up or are training up their sons or grandsons for other callings than 

 their own — have given them or are giving them, in fact, an English 

 education. It is but natural that men should prepare their sous 

 for such walks of life as they think would be most advantageous 

 to them, and this is what the pandits of Bengal have been doing. 

 Non-pandit Brahman families hardly ever think of training up any 

 juvenile member at a tol for the career of a pandit. Our tols arc 

 thus being threatened with a stoppage of supply of boys. An utter 

 stoppage of supply is not likely to occur in the near future but 

 matters appear to be clearly tending to this. The aggregate intellect ual 

 capacity <>l' the present generation of tol students is lower than that 

 ol" the past generation as unquestionably, I think, as the number is 

 lower- ; and this deterioration in quality and decrease in number, judging 

 from present circumstances, tend to be progressive. To arrest this 



