Mahomedan. A considerable portion of this district is hilly, jungly, and thinly inhabited. Highway depredations were frequent, chiefly committed on Hindoo pilgrims journeying through the forests to the sanctuary at Baidyanath, where there is a celebrated temple dedicated to Siva. In 1814 an arrangement was made with the petty hill chiefs of the western jungles to secure their own abstinence from plundering, and also their assistance towards the suppression of robberies perpetrated by others.
Indigenous Schools.—I find no account of the state of indigenous education in this district. Hamilton is silent on the subject, and in reply to inquiries made by the General Committee in 1823, the local Agent of Government stated that there were no seminaries for the instruction of youth in the district, either public or private, and, as I suppose must be understood, either elementary or learned. If, as I suspect, this statement is incorrect, it is the more extraordinary, because the agent appears to have taken a great deal of trouble to collect information regarding the means existing in the district supposed to be applicable to the encouragement of education. From the analogy of other neighboring districts, it seems incredible that there should be no schools of any kind amongst a population in which there is a proportion of thirty Hindoos to one Mahomedan.
In 1820 a Hindoo named Sarbanand, who claimed succession to the office of ojha or high-priest of the temple of Baidyanath already mentioned, made an offer to the Government through the local agent to give 5,000 Rupees as an endowment for a Native school in the district on condition that his claim to the succession of the ojhaship might be sanctioned and established by the authority of Government. From a notice of this transaction contained in the records of the General Committee, it would appear that he actually sent the money to the Collector’s office, and that in addition to the establishment of a school he wished it to be in part, expended on the excavation of a tank at Soory, the chief town of the district. The offer was declined, and Sarbanand informed that he must abide the regular adjudication of the law courts on his claim, which proved unfavourable.
The acting agent and collector in Beerbhoom in 1823 seems to have considered that the funds of the temple were liable to be applied to the establishment of public institutions, but it does not appear on what grounds this opinion was formed. According to one account the collections of the temple average 30,000 rupees per annum, the amount depending on the number and liberality of the pilgrims. According to an official estimate made in 1822, the resources of the temple were supposed to be 1,50,000 rupees annually. A specific fact stated is that in two months the collections amounted to 15,000 rupees, but it is not said whether the two
