HISTORICAL SKETCH.

11

The difficulties in getting girls to study were even greater. “It is
10% our custom” was the invariable answer given when the parents
were asked to send their girls to boarding schools. It was considered
1 disgrace for a woman to be able to read and write. However, an
attempt was made, and in 1823 we had 30 girls studying in our station
soarding schools besides 120 boys. Of village schools we had 37 with
1.650 pupils.
The time had now come to make still another advance, and it was
decided to start a college for boys for imparting higher education to
the most promising candidates taken from the station boarding schools.
There was great opposition to this plan, both on the part of the friends
of Missions and the Ceylon Government ; but these difficulties were in
part overcome and an institution for boysstarted at Batticotta in 1823
called the  Batticotta Seminary.” The course of study was in both
Tamil and English, and embraced the following subjects: —In the
Academical Department, Algebra, Euclid, Conic Sections, Natural
Philosophy, Chemistry, Astronomy, Logic, Rhetoric, Mental and Moral
Philosophy, Paley’s Natural Theology, Butler's Analogy, Classical
Tamil, and Sanskrit ; in the Normal Department, Arithmetic, Algebra,
Srammar, Geography, History, Natural Theology, Tamil Classical
Reader, English Bible, &amp;e. Forty-eight names were enrolled in the
two departments.
In 1824 the “Female Central School” was started at Uduvil and
a few girls admitted. [This is now called the Uduvil Girls’ Anglo-Vernacular
 Boarding School.] ¢ The girls themselves,” so wrote one
&gt;f the missionaries, “ though quite young, appeared to feel that there
was some impropriety in their learning to read and write ; and it was
not until they had each the promise of a small gold necklace when
able to read fluently in the New Testament that they could be induced
to apply themselves successfully to study.”
Thus at the close of 1824 the Mission had a boys’ college, a girls’
soarding school, 5 English primary schools, 5 primary girls’ schools,
and 32 mixed village schools. The total number under instruction
was over 1,800. As was natural, much time was given in the college
to comparative study between the Hindu and European systems of
shronology, the Puranic and Copernican systems of Gecgraphy and
Astronomy, &amp;c. The Hindu students thus acquired a more thorough
enowledge of their own writings than they do to-day. As fallacies in
the Hindu system were exposed the students became more convinced
of the truths of Christianity, and we are not surprised to learn that in
the first decade or two in the history of the Mission there were many
conversions to the Christian faith. In the third triennial report of the
Batticotta Seminary (published, bythe way, in the Church Mission Press,
Nellore, in 1833) we notice that in * April, 1830, the Seminary was
favoured with a visit from the Lord Bishop of Calentta, India, who was
accompanied by several other gentlemen. The Bishop spent the
greater part of a day in examining the students ......... and at the
slose His Lordship expressed in gratifying terms the pleasure he had
experienced.” At the annual examination held in September of the
same year His Majesty’s Commissioners of Inquiry, C. H. Cameron,
fisq., and Col. Colebrooke, were present and expressed their gratification
 at what they had witnessed. Two years later His Excellency
the Governor and several other gentlemen were present.