Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 417

STATIONARY CHARACTER OF LEARNING
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nut believe that the Brahmins of modern times are, in any
degree, more learned than their ancestors of the times of
Lycurgus and Pythagoras. During this long space of time
many barbarous races have emerged from the darkness of
ignorance, have attained the summit of civilization, and
have extended their intellectual researches almost to the
utmost limits of human intelligence yet all this time the
Hindus have been perfectly stationary. We do not find
amongst them any trace of mental or moral improvement,
any sign of advance in the arts and sciences. Every
impartial observer must, indeed, admit that they are now
very far behind the peoples who inscribed their names long
after them on the roll of civilized nations.
The learning which won for them so much respect and
reverence from their fellow-countrymen, and which ren-
dered them so famous in the eyes of foreign nations, among
whom ignorance and superstition then prevailed, was
connected with astronomy, astrology, and magic. Several
authors have given details of their astronomical system,
and it is fully explained in the Asiatic Researches. More-
over, Father Pons, a former Jesuit missionary in the
Carnatic, had, long before this, discussed it in a highly
interesting treatise published in the Memoires de V Academic
des Sciences, and likewise we find it discussed in the Histoire
Generate de Tons les Peuples by the Abbe Lambert.
It is
from these sources that the famous astronomer Bailly
derived almost all that he has written on Hindu Astro-
;
nomy.
The accuracy
of the investigations of the learned Jesuit
missionary in this direction has been since confirmed but
in the same work he speaks of the schools and of what he
calls the
academies of India. It seems to me that he is
rather too favourably impressed with these latter institu-
tions, and is far too profuse in his eulogies on the methods
of teaching and the course of studies in vogue in the so-
called academies.
As a matter of fact, no comparison whatever can be
drawn between schools in India and those in Europe. The
system pursued in the former of causing everything to be
learnt by rote is, in my opinion, essentially wrong, and
tends to prolong indefinitely the course of study.
More-
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