A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.337.2

v1.c4.337.2

But when the case of Oriya comes to be considered, it must be remembered that it is spoken not only by five millions in the settled and civilized districts of the sea-coast, but by an uncounted and widely dispersed mass of wild tribes in the vast tract of mountains which covers hundreds of miles inland, and extends as far west as Nagpore and as far south as Telingana. In these regions it is rapidly supplanting the old non-Aryan dialects; and from its having absorbed into itself much of the non-Aryan element, it affords a far better medium of civilization than Bengali. Moreover, it is far beyond the power of the handful of English and Bengalis settled in Orissa to stamp out the mother-tongue of all these millions, and it may be added that any forcible measures of repression would be entirely foreign and repugnant to the spirit of our policy. The result of teaching Bengali in our schools, to the exclusion of the local vernacular, would only be that the small proportion of Oriya boys who attend those schools would know the former in addition to the latter, that they would learn to despise their mother-tongue, and that a gap would be created between the mass of the peasantry and the small body of educated persons.