Part 23

(TO FIRST EDITION)

To you, dear Wife--to whom beside so well?-- True Counsellor and tried, at every shift, I bring my "Book of Counsels:" let it tell Largeness of love by littleness of gift;

And take this growth of foreign skies from me, (A scholar's thanks for gentle help in toil,) Whose leaf, "though dark," like Milton's Hoemony, "Bears a bright golden flower, if not in this soil."

April 9, 1861.

PREFACE

TO THE "BOOK OF GOOD COUNSELS."

The Hitopadesa is a work of high antiquity and extended popularity. The prose is doubtless as old as our own era; but the intercalated verses and proverbs compose a selection from writings of an age extremely remote. The Mahábhárata and the textual Veds are of those quoted; to the first of which Professor M. Williams (in his admirable edition of the Nala, 1860) assigns the modest date of 350 B.C., while he claims for the Rig-Veda an antiquity as high as 1300 B.C. The Hitopadesa may thus be fairly styled "The Father of all Fables;" for from its numerous translations have probably come Esop and Pilpay, and in latter days Reineke Fuchs. Originally compiled in Sanskrit, it was rendered, by order of Nushirván, in the sixth century A.D., into Persic. From the Persic it passed, A.D. 850, into the Arabic, and thence into Hebrew and Greek. In its own land it obtained as wide a circulation. The Emperor Akbar, impressed with the wisdom of its maxims and the ingenuity of its apologues, commended the work of translating it to his own Vizier, Abdul Fazel. That Minister accordingly put the book into a familiar style, and published it with explanations, under the title of the Criterion of Wisdom. The Emperor had also suggested the abridgment of the long series of shlokes which here and there interrupt the narrative, and the Vizier found this advice sound, and followed it, like the present Translator. To this day, in India, the Hitopadesa, under its own or other names (as the Anvári Suhaili), retains the delighted attention of young and old, and has some representative in all the Indian vernaculars. A selection from the metrical Sanskrit proverbs and maxims is here given.

PROVERBIAL WISDOM

FROM THE

SHLOKAS OF THE HITOPADESA.

This Book of Counsel read, and you shall see, Fair speech and Sanskrit lore, and Policy.

"Wise men, holding wisdom highest, scorn delights, more false than fair; Daily live as if Death's fingers twined already in thy hair!

"Truly, richer than all riches, better than the best of gain, Wisdom is; unbought, secure--once won, none loseth her again.

"Bringing dark things into daylight, solving doubts that vex the mind, Like an open eye is Wisdom--he that hath her not is blind."

* * * * *

"Childless art thou? dead thy children? leaving thee to want and doole? Less thy misery than his is, who lives father to a fool."

"One wise son makes glad his father, forty fools avail him not: One moon silvers all that darkness which the silly stars did dot."

"Ease and health, obeisant children, wisdom, and a fair-voiced wife-- Thus, great King! are counted up the five felicities of life."

"For the son the sire is honoured; though the bow-cane bendeth true, Let the strained string crack in using, and what service shall it do?"

"That which will not be, will not be--and what is to be, will be: Why not drink this easy physic, antidote of misery?"

"Nay! but faint not, idly sighing, 'Destiny is mightiest,' Sesamum holds oil in plenty, but it yieldeth none unpressed."

"Ah! it is the Coward's babble, 'Fortune taketh, Fortune gave;' Fortune! rate her like a master, and she serves thee like a slave."

"Two-fold is the life we live in--Fate and Will together run: Two wheels bear life's chariot onward--Will it move on only one?"

"Look! the clay dries into iron, but the potter moulds the clay: Destiny to-day is master--Man was master yesterday."

"Worthy ends come not by wishing. Wouldst thou? Up, and win it, then! While the hungry lion slumbers, not a deer comes to his den."

* * * * *

"Silly glass, in splendid settings, something of the gold may gain; And in company of wise ones, fools to wisdom may attain."

"Labours spent on the unworthy, of reward the labourer balk; Like the parrot, teach the heron twenty words, he will not talk."