Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1911-12-30

Even the most ignorant yillager in IN
dia knows a few dohas or eouplets
that point moral lesson, and these
the preacher who is sent to him is
taushtto employ.
The Hindi doha is strange thing.
It's lines are rhymed, and the rhymed
couplet has the balanced form and
condensed message of the poetry of Al
exander Pope. Hindu poetry is usual
~ printed without separating words,
and as a result the reader may often
make many plays on words, a perfor
nance the indian mind takes delight
in Indeed, the more possible mean
ings to be gotten out OF little two
lined proverb the better, 1t is Il beau
ty and not Il defect to have a plural
meaning or be able to be twisted and
turned by new arrangement OF the
letters and words into proverb of
totally new meaning. 1t is not of the
epgram that l want to write to-day.
They are on every mans lips We are
continually being told that the little
pot soon boils;" Flint is cold, but It
contains fire." Prayer is the pillar Of
piety::" 1T takes time to be successful,
but no time to be ruined" do your
men can keep 4 secret-when two of
them are dead" etc.
In a country where the great per-
centage is illiterate, motto cards have
not yet achieved their American popu-
larity! but every Indian is himself a
travelling motto card The older the
aNing the better. Tennyson has real
lied this in his description OF the pro-
verb:
Jewels five words long
That on the stretch'd forennger OF all
Time
sparkle forever
Tulsi Das was great epigramma-
fist. To mention his name preaching
in a village is to strike Il sympathetic
chord at the beginning. EX-PreSident
Woodrow Wilson used to tell us in his
lectures at Princeton how an English
politician who was a rather poor
speaker and sometimes ran short of
ideas used to mention the name of
Gladstone and made up Il quotation
from him, planning in the applause.
that greeted the name the next few
sentences of the address. Sometimes
it is that way with the new hazar
preacher He begins by mentioning
the name of Tulsi Das. This national
hero of the HIindus was born in 1872 in
the region not far from our city of Al
lahabad Tulis became a wandering
aseetie. of whom even TO this day
there are 10000 in India. He, how
ever, was not an ordinary fai5ir-a
man who goes as naked as the law
allows and who covers himself with
clay and ashes and lets his hair mat
itself daily. Tulsi Das was clean
minded, too. When the time came for
his settling down as poet he transla
ted the old Sanskrit epics of obsolete
language into Hindi, the language of
the people. Valmeki Ramazan is the
source and inspiration of the great
Hindi epic. 1t itself is not free from
impurities. and il is one OF the few
glories of Indian literature that in
Tulsi Das's Ramazan not one impure
thought is to be found. The worth of
this statement can only be appreciated
by one who is familiar with the filth
found in Indian literature. The entire
poem has been called a passionate pro-
test against the virtual atheism of
philosophical Hindu philosophy. In
the Ramazan we are not told of a I'M
iversal nonpersonal essence in which
ones individuality is to be merged and
lost forever" The bits of hope held
out, the broken lights ali are fitted to
help the wanderer in the search for
truth, and the Ranlazan is probably
now the bestowed book of India. It
has been recently put into English
prose by r. c. Dutt. and now it has
found its way into the EYerymans Ii
brary; so some day the boys of AM
erica will be reading it along with the
other great epics, Homers Had and
Odyssey"
Tulsi Das was writing when Shakes
peare lived Shakespeare is great to-
day because he glorified the language
of the common people, as did his dark
skinned brother in far off Hindustan.
Milton thought a long time over the
question as to whether he should put
Paradise Lost" in Latin or English.
He voted for English, and it was the
best decision he made IN his life. Tut
81 Das cast his writings IN the Ian
guage of the common people, and l
suppose that is why so many of In
dia's zoe .0o9, COO love him today.
Perhaps some of the coupletS may be
of interest to American boys. My col
lege students are studying the proverbs
of the West this week. Here are Il few
pearls from India's coral strand. They
have lost their charm, for they are not
in the original; but they are for you to
read
so long as the hook is applied to the
elephants neck. so long he stays clean.
When the hook is away he throws dust
over himself"
There are two things in the world
worth doing: Giving a crust to the
needy and worshiping Cod
Fever is not cured without bitter medi-
cine"
1.-THE diamond fell on the market and
got covered with dirt. Many fool
passed by, only the jeweler recognized
It"
why should you go on doing that for
pleasure that causes pain? Out upon the
gold earring which tears the earlobe"
How will you get water if you dig
your well on a mountain Why perform
labor which results in nothing?"
''Who sought found it by going into
deep water. What will that heron catch
pVbn 81 +l,s OH,