Persian schools of this district, this course is very superficially taught, and some of the teachers do not even profess to carry their pupils beyond the Gulistan and Bostan.
In a Persian school, after the years of mere childhood, when the pupils are assumed to be capable of stricter application, the hours of study with intervals extend from six in the morning to nine at night. In the first place in the morning they revise the lessons of the previous day, after which a new lesson is read, committed to memory, and repeated to the master. About mid-day they have leave of absence for an hour when they dine, and on their return to school they are instructed in writing. About three o’clock they have another reading lesson which is also committed to memory, and about an hour before the close of day they have leave to play. The practice with regard to the forenoon and afternoon lessons in reading is to join the perusal of a work in prose with that of a work in verse; as the Gulistan with the Bostan and Abulfazl’s letters with the Secandar Nameh, the forenoon lesson being taken from one and the afternoon lesson from the other. In the evening they repeat the lessons of that day several times, until they have them perfectly at command; and, after making some preparation for the lessons of the next day, they have leave to retire. Thursday every week is devoted to the revision of old lessons; and when that is completed, the pupils seek instruction or amusement according to their own pleasure in the perusal of forms of prayer and stanzas of poetry, and are dismissed on that day at three o’clock without any new lesson. On Friday, the sacred day of Musalmans, there is no schooling. In other districts in respectable or wealthy Musalman families, besides the literary instructor called Miyan or Akhun, there is also a domestic tutor or Censor Morum called Atalik, a kind of head-servant, whose duty it is to train the children of the family to good manners, and to see that they do not neglect any duty assigned to them; but I do not find any trace of this practice in Rajshahi.
Upon the whole the course of Persian instruction, even in its less perfect forms such as are found to exist in this district, has a more comprehensive character and a more liberal tendency than that pursued in the Bengali schools. The systematic use of books, although in manuscript, is a great step in advance, accustoming the minds of the pupils to forms of regular composition, to correct and elegant language, and to trains of consecutive thought, and thus aiding both to stimulate the intellect and to form the taste. It might be supposed that the moral bearing of some of the text books would have a beneficial effect on the character of the pupils; but as far as I have been able to observe or ascertain, those books are employed like all the rest solely for the purpose of conveying lessons in language—lessons in the knowledge of sounds and words, in the construction of sentences, or in anecdotical information, but not for the purpose of sharpening the moral perceptions
