( 74 ) The advantages were that the above-mentioned subjects were learnt with greater facility and were better grasped when they were taught through the medium of the Vernacular (Bangali). This was not only practically found out when the system was tried in the Sanskrit College, but it is fairly admitted by all teachers that boys who go through a course of teaching in a Vernacular school up to M. V. Standard before joining an English School distinguish themselves in the class for proficiency in His fory, Geography and Mathematics. The practice was, however, abandoned in the Sanskrit College on the complaints of guardians that their boys had, under that system of training, acquired a bad habit in the pronunciation and spelling of proper names and that they often failed to recognise places and persons in their English garb, though they had been quite familiar with them in their Bengali text-books. These disadvantages, however, can be obviated by little care in the preparation of the text-books in the vernaculars. Geographical and Historical names should always be written in Roman characters with their euphonic equivalents in the Vernacular. No attempt should be made to present translated forms of such names as the Cape Good Hope, the Mediterranean Sea &c. Bangali translations of such familiar English words as Telegraph, Railway &c. should also be avoided, as being more unintelligible than the originals. When for want of appropriate words in the Bengali Language an author is forced to look elsewhere for them, I do not see why preference should be given to Sanskrit words, or words newly-coined from Sanskrit roots. In my opinion the foreign words should be retained and allowed to settle themselves in the Bengali Language. A false sense of purism need not deter a Bengali author from enriching his mother-tongue by the transplantation bodily of foreign words. I therefore beg to say that I approve, on the whole, of the proposal to make the Vernacular Languages the medium of instruction in our schools in such subjects us History, Geography and Mathemetics. Though I am not averse to carrying it up to the Entrance Standard. I would rather proceed more cautiously in the matter and restrict the proposal up to the th class of Entrance Schools, for the present; at least until Vernacular books prepared on the lines suggested by me are forth-coming. In regard to your second question I beg to say that I approve in general of the proposal to make the study of the Vernacular Ianguages a part of curriculum in F. A. and B. A. Fxaminations. But I am stroghly opposed to the proposal of adding a Vernacular Language to the F. A. and B. A. curriculum only so far as those candidates who take up Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian, are concerned, if the proposed addition be made by lowering the
