( 64 ) From BABU LAL GoPAL CHAKRAvART M. A. Professor, Ripon College. TO The Committee of the Bangiya Sahitya Parisad for deliberating upon some very important proposals regarding the necessity of recognition of the importance of Vernacular languages by the University of Calcutta, Calcntta, 7th February 1895. GENTLEMEN, In reply to your circular letter dated the 5th ultimo, which unfortunately reached me only yesterday, requesting me to inform you my views regarding your proposals, I beg to make the following remarks :- (1) With reference to the first part of the first proposals, that is, that part which bears upon the advisability of making the Vernacular languages the media of instruction up to the Entrance Examination of the University of Calcutta in History, Geography and Mathematics, I must first of all say that I entirely approve of the principles upon which the proposal itself is based. The way in which History is taught in our schools, is in my humble opinion highly defective. Young students in consequence of the rotten method adopted by teachers in the lower forms naturally come to regard History as merely a string of facts. This limited view of the province of History, inspite of the fact that it has the sanction of one of the oldest historians of the world (Herodotus), ought now-a-days to be systematically discouraged. Our young students are never sought to be impressed with the idea that History is the biography of national life, and that if "Lives of great men all remind us that we can make our lives sublime,' lives of great nations are equally calculated to awaken those dormant energies of the collective soul of the community which alone can elevate a nation in the scale of life. His supreme utility of the study of History, viz.--that which consists in the knowledge and regulation of those complex forces which govern the destinies of nations, is never sought to be derived. Nor can this deep signifi cance of an apparently dry collection of facts be fully appreciated when the margin of time which young students can possibly set apart for historical study is all exhausted in understanding the meanings of foreign words and expressions. The language of the History of England or of India which Entrance students have got to read is almost invariably a little more
