PROGRESS OF FEMALE EDUCATION IN INDIA.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—In these days, when the women of England and Scotland succeed in gaining distinctions equal to those won by men, it may interest some of you readers to note an instance of corresponding progress in India, where women have long suffered under far greater drawbacks and disadvantages than they have endured in Europe.

Miss Cornelia Sorabji is of pure Indian birth. Her father is a Parsee, but has became a Christian and a missionary; her mother is of Hindoo origin and of Christian religion, and keeps a large school at Poonah, where children of all faiths — Hindoo, Mussulman, Parsee, and Christian — meet and are successfully educated together without the occurrence of religious difficulties. Miss Sorabji was so well trained there, and at the Denan College at Poonah, that at the age of 21 she passed the second B.A. examination at the Bombay University as one of six in the first class — the others, of course, being men — and she had previously held the Hughling scholarship, gained the Havelock prize, and been at the head of the Denan College (consisting of 300 students) in English. She has since been appointed Senior Fellow for 12 months in the Guzerat Arts College at Ahmedabad, and in this capacity she has to lecture to a class of men on the subjects of English and logic, her pupils being candidates both for the Previous and the two B.A. degrees. Miss Sorabji has felt her undertaking to be an alarming and an anxious one, for, of course, there are many watching to see how this experiment may answer, but she feels that any discomforts or difficulties attending the ordeal will be amply compensated if she succeeds and thus opens a new era and sphere for the women of India, whose energies and capacities have been so closely suppressed hitherto. She reports the work to be enjoyable, the students to be respectful and attentive, and that each successive lecture becomes increasingly easy to her.

This experiment, that of a woman lecturing to men, is novel even here, and to those who know something of India and of Indian women and their ways it will seem most singular, though, perhaps, it will not long remain so, as several ladies in Calcutta have taken the B.A. degree at that University, and one, at least, the M.A. degree.

Miss Sorabji is very desirous to come to England and to pass the examination requisite to gain an Oxford or a Cambridge degree (the degree itself being as yet not granted to womenkind) since this would be of great advantage to her in her destined career in India. Difficulties, chiefly of a pecuniary character, prevent her at present from following this course, and unless an opening or a friend should arise she means to prepare to take the M.A. degree at the Bombay University, with a view to continuing the useful work or teaching and of helping her countrywomen directly and indirectly by the stimulus of her example. The thought that perhaps others, like myself, may feel interested in watching Miss Sorabji's courageous course must be my excuse for troubling you with letter.

15, Bruton-street, March 7. MARY HOBHOUSE.