CAREY AND FORT WILLIAM COLLEGE § 123 It would interest Bengali readers to learn that debates were held in Bengali and the ‘subject at the First Public Disputation held in February 6, 1802 was “Whether the Asiatics are capable of as high degree of civilisation as Europeans.” ‘The theses read by the students were published and they afford us some of the earliest specimens of sustained prose writing at- aiiaed by thosbadents tempted by Europeans. We_ give of the College, below the theses pronounced at a disputation in Bengali in the Second Publie Disputation held on March 29, 1803 by James Hunter, although we have, as we shall see, better specimens of prose-writing even before this date. This would, however, serve as the average specimen of ‘European prose’ of the time. There are some quaint turns of phrases, a few inevitable mistakes of idiom and syntax and errors of ortho- graphy, and the style is a little too crude and sanscritised ; yet if we compare with it the contemporary prose of Pratapaditya Charitra (1801) and Lipima/a (1802), this specimen will hardly be at a disadvantage with them in many respects*. The scarcity of the publications which
- Reports of the annual Disputations till 1819 will be found in
detail in Roebuck, op. cit. Also in Buchanan, op. cit. till 1805; and also see Seton-Karr, op. cit. p. 296; also in Primitiae Orientales, vols, i-iii. 2 Some of the students of the College published notable works. In 1808 Henry Sarjent, who was a distinguished student of Bengali in the College (See Roebuck, op. cit. pp. 178-180, 218-221) translated the first four books of the A®neid or Iliad (the first book, according to Long’s Catalogue, came ont in 1805). Monckton, another student, translated Shakespeare’s Tempest. (Cal. Rev, 1850, Art. Beng. Lit.). Long, however, followed by Dinesh-chandra Sen, (op. cit. p. 876) mistakes the name of Henry Sarjent for “J. Serjeant,”” From Roebuck op. cit, it appears that there was no student in the College bearing the name of “J, Serjeant,” and no such person, it would seem from Dodwell and Miles, op. cit. ever entered the Civil Service.
