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TWELVE MEN OF BENGAL

settlement of an estate worth eighty thousand rupees. His subscriptions to local schools all over his vast estates amounted to a large sum. He annually gave a gold medal for proficiency in Sanskrit literature and a gold medal in connection with the Tagore Law Lectures. Another gold medal was for proficiency in physical science, while other scholarships were founded by him for Law and Sanskrit. He himself was vice-president of the Faculty of Arts in 1881 and President in the following year. In the same year he was appointed by the Government of India a member of the Education Commission to investigate the working of the system founded in 1854 and to ascertain the actual position of education at the time. Presided over by Sir William Hunter, the Commission went thoroughly into the needs of Indian education and, while finding that in Bengal the system already inaugurated was doing well, made a number of recommendations which have gone far to perfect it still further in recent years.

Sir Jotindra's social entertainments were famous in Calcutta. His hospitability was on a princely scale and there were few European or Indian visitors or residents of distinction in the capital who did not partake of it. At Tagore Castle and at his country seat Emerald Bower outside Calcutta he surrounded himself with a valuable collection of pictures, books and objects of art, his library being one of the most complete private collections in India. Here, engaged