1686.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 103 



Robinson, intimating their desire to withdraw from the Society, were 

 recorded. 



The Chairman said that, in behalf of the Council, he had to submit 

 to the meeting an important resolution, and he regretted much that 

 the President or the Vice-Presidents were not present to take charge 

 of it. But as a native of India, deeply interested in the education of his 

 countrymen, he could not put it to the vote without saying a few words 

 on the subject of it. That subject was no other than the intellectual 

 culture of a whole race, and on its correct understanding depended 

 the welfare of a hundred and eighty millions of fellow beings. It had 

 already engaged* the attention of some of the greatest scholars that 

 Europe had sent out to India, and some of the most revered names in 

 the annals of the Society had been associated with it. But the ques- 

 tion had not yet been finally settled. It was yet undecided, at least 

 in India, whether the masses should be taught through the medium 

 of the vernacular, or through a foreign language, and ever and anon 

 the most startling theories were propounded on the subject. But 

 the sympathies of the Asiatic Society had always been with those 

 who advocated the use of the vernaculars. " Thirty years ago, 

 the late distinguished naturalist, Mr. Brian Haughton Hodgson, 

 whose bust adorns our hall, and whose numerous and varied contribu- 

 tions adorn the pages of our Journal, most ably advocated the 

 preeminence of the vernaculars in a series of letters, whose arguments 

 yet remain unanswered ; and this day I have the honor, in the name of 

 the Council, to move that we record our approbation of the enlighten- 

 ed opinion of another of our distinguished associates, that to render 

 education accessible to all, to make knowledge permeate the masses, 

 it must be offered through the vernacular." It was not to be denied 

 that the current languages of India were as yet. poor and with- 

 out a healthy literature, that all the sciences were locked up 

 in the languages of Europe, and that to render them accessible to the 

 people, they must have recourse to the " open sesame" of the English 

 tongue, but that " open sesame," that Aladin's lamp of knowledge, 

 however useful when once acquired, was not easy to be had. It was 

 easier far to create a healthy scientific literature in any vernacular 

 language, than for a large nation to acquire a foreign tongue. ■• I 

 have myself devoted some of the best* years of my life to its 



