The minister’s son paid his visits daily at the Pariah’s house, and his attachment to the daughter increased with their acquaintance. He found that she possessed an understanding, though not highly cultivated, yet of a rare order. The degradation in which she had been held in being of no caste, had deprived her of the means of raising her mind to the elevation of which it was capable; she had nevertheless not neglected it. All the means within her reach she had employed, and her natural quickness of perception had given her advantages possessed by few. She had not been allowed to attend the village school in consequence of the disgrace attached to her social station; but she had availed herself of the assistance of a learned Mussulman who dwelt at some short distance from her father’s abode, and he had given her an insight into the history and literature of her country, and what he could not teach, her own readiness of apprehension supplied. At this period education was cultivated by the Hindoos in every village, by a national edict; knowledge was universally inculcated, and it was then as rare to find a poor villager who could not read as it is now to find one who can. In fact, the whole social system seems to have undergone a complete revolution. During those ages when Europe was enveloped in intellectual darkness that exposed her to the contempt of the very countries which are now drawing from the stores of her wisdom and science a harvest which bids fair to ripen into universal civilisation, Hindostan was distinguished by a race of philosophers, who, but for the conquest to which that country has been subjected, and the degrading dominion under which its vast population has so long groaned, would probably have raised it to an elevation in intellectual and social dignity, not inferior to ancient Greece at the brightest period of her glory. “Education has always, from the earliest period of their history, been an object of public care and public interest to the Hindoo government on the peninsula of India. Every well-regulated village under those governments had a public school and public schoolmaster. The system of instruction in them was that which, in consequence of its efficiency, simplicity, and cheapness, was a few years ago introduced from Madras into England, and from England into the rest of Europe. Every Hindoo parent looked upon the education of his child as a solemn duty which he owed to his god and to his country, and placed him under the schoolmaster of his village as soon as he had attained his fifth year. The ceremony of introducing him for the first time to the schoolmaster and his scholars was publicly recorded, and was attended with all the solemnity of a religious observance; a prayer being publicly offered up on the occasion to the figure of Genesa, the Hindoo God of Wisdom, which was at the head of every Hindoo school, imploring him to aid the child in his endeavours to learn and become wise.”[28]