The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t15.5

c8.s1.t15.5

I find no account of the state of indigenous education in this district. Hamilton is silent on the subject, and in reply to inquiries made by the General Committee in 1823, the local Agent of Government stated that there were no seminaries for the instruction of youth in the district, either public or private, and, as I suppose must be understood, either elementary or learned. If, as I suspect, this statement is incorrect, it is the more extraordinary, because the agent appears to have taken a great deal of trouble to collect information regarding the means existing in the district supposed to be applicable to the encouragement of education. From the analogy of other neighbouring districts, it seems incredible that there should be no schools of any kind amongst a population in which there is a proportion of thirty Hindoos to one Mahomedan.