著者

蒲豊彦

雑誌

東洋学報 / The Toyo Gakuho

巻号頁・発行日

vol.88, no.4, pp.471-490, 2007-03

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The twentieth century saw a fuming point in the colonial regime, at which time the administrator of British India changed the government's policy orientation from orientalism to reformism. In the area of education, the orientalist-anglicist controversy was one of highlights of this transformation. In an attempt to break the deadlock in the controversy, Charles Edward Trevelyan (l807-86), a fervent anglicist, forced the orientalists into an 1834 debate regarding the application of the Roman alphabet to vernacular languages in India. Basing his "for" argument on the necessity of popular education, he cited the universality of the Roman alphabet, several of its merits, and its benevolent effect on popular education. In addition, he related romanization to the formation of a genre of national literature and the cultural unification of the Indian people, saying, "Indian vernaculars and its literature will be enriched by supplies of words and ideas derived from English."As for the orthography of the Roman letters to be applied, Trevelyan abandoned the system created by John Borthwick Gilchrist, which was close to the standard at that time, in favor of that created by William Jones. Trevelyan said that Jones' scheme was more systematic and applicable to languages all over the world. Trevelyan's well-known inclination towards modern rationality and universality is clearly evident on this point.This controversy over English education was basically put to an end the following year by a memorandum written by Thomas Babington Macaulay, making the anglicists the victors. Thereafter, however, the Romanization project did not take off, for two reasons: 1) the controversy over Romanization was only one part of the English education debate, and 2) despite Trevelyan's plan being based on the promotion of popular education, educational administrators in British India chose not to pursue that direction after 1835.