Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/74

who has sometimes been called, though I fear without reason, a Christian, remonstrated against this system last year in a paper which he sent me to be put into Lord Amherst’s hands, and which, for its good English, good sense, and forcible arguments, is a real curiosity, as coming from an Asiatic. I have not since been in Calcutta, and know not whether any improvement has occurred in consequence; but from the unbounded attachment to Sanskrit literature displayed by some of those who chiefly manage those affairs, I have no great expectation of the kind. Of the value of the acquirements which so much is sacrificed to retain I can only judge from translations, and they certainly do not seem to me worth picking out of the rubbish under which they were sinking. Some of the poetry of the Mahabarat I am told is good, and I think a good deal of the Ramayuna pretty. But no work has yet been produced which even pretends to be authentic history. No useful discoveries in science are, I believe, so much as expected; and I have no great sympathy with those students who value a worthless tract merely because it calls itself old, or a language which teaches nothing, for the sake of its copiousness and intricacy. If I were to run wild after oriental learning I should certainly follow that of