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PREFACE.


About twenty years ago, when I got Percival's collection of Tamil proverbs into my hands, I had only been a short time in India, and had as yet got no insight into Indian thought and literature. I had read only a couple of small Tamil story books, but when reading these I had already perceived that the Indians could hardly tell a story without introducing some proverbs into it. My attention was thus at an early period of my life in India drawn to proverbs, and I began to study Percival's collection. I got, however, very little out of my study, as Percival had only given a translation of the Tamil proverbs, and had given no hints as to their meaning. So in those days I got no insight whatever into the real household proverbs, but had almost to rest satisfied with the many aphorisms, or what we in Tamil call (Symbol missingTamil characters), of which we find large numbers in all our Tamil proverb collections. Yet, from what I had seen in the story books and in Percival's collection I had got an interest in these terse, blunt and poetic sayings; and year after year on getting deeper into the thought and life of India, and at the same time becoming acquainted with more and more of the proverbs, my interest in them steadily increased. And whenever I met with a new proverb either when talking with the people or reading Tamil books, I always looked for it in Percival's collection, and if he had not got it, I took a note of it; and at times I tried to have some of them explained by the common people.

While I was thus leisurely prosecuting the study of Tamil proverbs, the Rev. J. Lazarus, B.A., began to prepare a "Dictionary of Tamil Proverbs." I looked forward to the publication of this book with very great interest, but when it appeared, I was somewhat disappointed with it, partly because Mr. Lazarus had not given a translation of the proverbs and partly because his explanation of the proverbs seemed to me, from the insight I had got into the proverbs through years of study, not always to be the right