The special caste grievances of Brahmans against Western education are very frankly set forth in a speech on “The Duties of Brahmans,” delivered in Bombay at the beginning of this year to his fellow caste-men by Rao Sahib Joshi, a distinguished and very enlightened, member of the Yajurvidi Palshikar sept of Brahmans.  Mr. Joshi, who laid great stress upon the duty of loyalty to the British Raj, began by recalling the patent conferred upon them by a British Governor of Bombay at the beginning of the eighteenth century for the protection of their privileges, especially in connexion with the teaching of medicine.  But their community had gradually lost ground from various causes, and amongst those which he enumerated, he laid the chief stress upon the diffusion of secular education.  He fully recognized the benefits of English education, but “all education being of a secular character, it made the new generation a class of sceptics.  People brought up with English ideas, and in the atmosphere of secular education, now began to pay less respect to their Gurus and hereditary priests.  In former days when the Guru or head priest came to one’s house people used to say:—­’I bow down to the Guru; the Guru is Brahma, the Guru is Vishnu, the Guru is Shiwa; verily the Guru is the Sublime Brahma!’ This idea, this respect the secular English education shattered to pieces, and so the income and importance of the hereditary priests dwindled down.”

NOTE 21

FEMALE EDUCATION.

In his quinquennial review of the progress of education in India, Mr. H.W.  Orange quotes the following remarks by Mr. Sharp, Director of Public Instruction in Eastern Bengal, on the position of female education, adding that they describe the prevailing, if not quite universal, state of affairs:—­

“All efforts to promote female education have hitherto encountered peculiar difficulties.  These difficulties arise chiefly from the customs of the people themselves.  The material considerations, which have formed a contributing factor in the spread of boys’ schools, are inoperative in the case of girls.  The natural and laudable desire for education as an end in itself, which is evinced by the upper and middle classes as regards their sons, is no match for the conservative instincts of the Mahomedans, the system of early marriage among the Hindus, and the rigid seclusion of women which is a characteristic of both.  These causes prevent any but the most elementary education from being given to girls.  The lack of female teachers and the alleged unsuitability of the curriculum, which is asserted to have been framed more with a view to the requirements of boys than those of girls, form subsidiary reasons or excuses against more rapid progress.  To these difficulties may be added the belief, perhaps more widely felt than expressed, that the general education of women means a social revolution, the extent