Volito vivu’ per ora virum. Ennius.
Proverbs in general: various definitions.
IN all ages and countries the study of proverbs and popular sayings has appealed by its human interest to many sorts of minds. Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus are believed to have collected the proverbs of their day, and many of Lucian’s wittiest sayings are pointed from the same armoury. In the later middle age both Erasmus* and Scaliger made collections of proverbs, unfortunately only of classical proverbs, and the former defined a proverb as “Celebre dictum scita quadam novitate insigne.” This earliest definition seems to overlook some of the essential features of the best proverbs—their brevity, their bearing on the practical conduct of every-day life, and their origin in the speech of the people. What makes a proverb, as M. Dejardin† excellently puts it, “c’est sa vogue populaire.” Erasmus fails to bring out this point and thus does not distinguish the proverb from the apophthegm, the brilliant expression of the concentrated thought of the learned, and from the aphorism which aims at scientific precision and corresponds, in the domain of ethics, to the axiom of mathematical reasoning. Voltaire illustrates the distinction admirably when he says of Boileau’s poetry that one finds in it some expressions which have passed into proverbs and others which deserve to rank as maxims. “Maxims,” he goes on to say, “are elevated, wise and useful; they are made for the witty and appeal to cultivated taste. Proverbs on the other hand are for the vulgar, for the common man, whom,” he observes characteristically, “one meets in all ranks of society.”
Other writers have dwelt upon other points of the genuine proverb. The grammarian Donatus insists that it must be accommodatum rebus temporibus, must fit the facts and the period: the philologist Festus, looking to the etymology of the word, lays stress on its quality as ad agendum apta, a guide in the business of life. A modern writer who is impressed both by the brevity and by the selfish and heartless tone of many proverbs describes them as “the algebra of materialism.” The epigram is ingenious and hits off the tendency of the proverb to get condensed into a paradoxical formula such as Festina lente, but the reference to materialism seems hardly appropriate. To describe proverbs as the algebra of popular pessimism would in some respects be nearer to the truth.
As might be expected, the most exhaustive and careful definition, albeit a trifle ponderous, has been made in Germany. According to Borchart * a proverb is a saying current among the people which sets forth in thoroughly popular language, and with studied brevity, a truth acknowledged by all. By the side of this we may place Rivarol’s opinion that proverbs represent the fruits of popular experience and, as it were, the common-sense of all ages compressed into a formula. And we may conclude the series with the admirable phrase commonly attributed to Lord John Russell, but probably suggested to him by a variety of sayings of the same type which are current in many countries, “The wisdom of many and the wit of one.” Of this it may fairly be said that to define a proverb by a proverb is a triumph of definition.
Classified as general and particular.
There are, however, proverbs and proverbs. Some contain a truth of general application which holds good for all time and stands its ground in the face of social change and political or economic revolution. Such proverbs are based on universal experience and embody the common-sense of mankind. Their form, indeed, may differ widely, but the underlying idea is everywhere the same and everywhere has given rise spontaneously to some telling phrase. Our own proverb “Coals to Newcastle” figures in the delicate irony of the Greeks as “Owls to Athens.” Other proverbs again have a more limited range. They express a truth rooted in experience, but the experience is that of a particular people or of a particular country, and the sayings in which it is summed up are coloured by the spirit of the time when they were coined and of the nation which produced them. They hold good for their birth-place, but not for all the world.
Indian proverbs of caste.
It need hardly be said that the proverbs and sayings relating to caste which are brought together in Appendix I and are commented on in this chapter belong for the most part to the second of the two classes noticed above. In respect both of their subject-matter and of their form they are local and particular rather than universal and general. Yet now and then one finds a truth of universal experience rendered in terms of caste relations, and the fact is instructive in so far as it bears witness to the supremacy of the caste sentiment in India and to the prominent place that it occupies in the daily life of the people.
A village portrait gallery.
No one indeed can fail to be struck by the intensely popular character of Indian proverbial philosophy and by its freedom from the note of pedantry which is so conspicuous in Indian literature. These quaint sayings have dropped fresh from the lips of the Indian rustic; they convey a vivid impression of the anxieties, the troubles, the annoyances, and the humours of his daily life; and any sympathetic observer who has felt the fascination of an oriental village would have little difficulty in constructing from these materials a fairly accurate picture of rural society in India. The mise en scène is not altogether a cheerful one. It shows us the average peasant dependent upon the vicissitudes of the season and the vagaries of the monsoon, and watching from day to day to see what the year may bring forth. Should rain fall at the critical moment his wife will get golden earrings, but one short fortnight of drought may spell calamity when “God takes all at once.” Then the forestalling Baniya flourishes by selling rotten grain, and the Jāt cultivator is ruined. First die the improvident Musalmān weavers (Jolāhā), then the oil-pressers for whose wares there is no demand; the carts lie idle, for the bullocks are dead, and the bride goes to her husband without the accustomed rites. But be the season good or bad, the pious Hindu’s life is ever overshadowed by the exactions of the Brāhman—“a thing with a string round its neck” (a profane hit at the sacred thread), a priest by appearance, a butcher at heart, the chief of a trio of tormentors gibbeted in the rhyming proverb:—
Is dunyā men tīn kasāī, Pisu, khatmal, Brāhman bhāī.
Which may be rendered—
“Blood-suckers three on earth there be, The bug, the Brāhman and the flea.”
The Brāhman.
Before the Brāhman starves the King’s larder will be empty; cakes must be given to him while the children of the house may lick the grindstone for a meal; his stomach is a bottomless pit; he eats so immoderately that he dies from wind. He will beg with a lakh of rupees in his pocket, and a silver begging-bowl in his hand. In his greed for funeral fees he spies out corpses like a vulture, and rejoices in the misfortune of his clients. A village with a Brāhman in it is like a tank full of crabs; to have him as a neighbour is worse than leprosy: if a snake has to be killed the Brāhman should be set to do it, for no one will miss him. If circumstances compel you to perjure yourself, why swear on the head of your son, when there is a Brāhman handy? Should he die (as is the popular belief) the world will be none the poorer. Like the devil in English proverbial philosophy, the Brāhman can cite scripture for his purpose; he demands worship himself but does not scruple to kick his low-caste brethren; he washes his sacred thread but does not cleanse his inner man; and so great is his avarice that a man of another caste is supposed to pray “O God, let me not be reborn as a Brāhman priest, who is always begging and is never satisfied.” He defrauds even the gods; Vishnu gets the barren prayers while the Brāhman devours the offerings. So Pan complains in one of Lucian’s dialogues that he is done out of the good things which men offer at his shrine.
The Baniyā.
The next most prominent figure in our gallery of popular portraits is that of the Baniyā, money-lender, grain-dealer and monopolist, who dominates the material world as the Brāhman does the spiritual. His heart, we are told, is no bigger than a coriander seed; he has the jaws of an alligator and a stomach of wax; he is less to be trusted than a tiger, a scorpion, or a snake; he goes in like a needle and comes out like a sword; as a neighbour he is as bad as a boil in the armpit. If a Baniyā is on the other side of a river you should leave your bundle on this side, for fear he should steal it. When four Baniyās meet they rob the whole world. If a Baniyā is drowning you should not give him a hand: he is sure to have some base motive for drifting down stream. He uses light weights and swears that the scales tip themselves; he keeps his accounts in a character that no one but God can read; if you borrow from him, your debt mounts up like a refuse heap or gallops like a horse; if he talks to a customer he “draws a line” and debits the conversation; when his own credit is shaky he writes up his transactions on the wall so that they can easily be rubbed out. He is so stingy that the dogs starve at his feast, and he scolds his wife if she spends a farthing on betel-nut. A Jain Baniya drinks dirty water and shrinks from killing ants and flies, but will not stick at murder in pursuit of gain. As a druggist the Baniya is in league with the doctor; he buys weeds at a nominal price and sells them very dear. Finally, he is always a shocking coward: eighty-four Khatris will run away from four thieves.
The Kāyasth
Nor does the clerical caste fare better at the hands of the popular epigrammatist. Where three Kāyasths are gathered together a thunderbolt is sure to fall; when honest men fall out the Kāyasth gets his chance. When a Kāyasth takes to money-lending he is a merciless creditor. He is a man of figures; he lives by the point of his pen; in his house even the cat learns two letters and a half. He is a versatile creature, and where there are no tigers he will become a shikāri; but he is no more to be trusted than a crow or a snake without a tail. One of the failings sometimes imputed to the educated Indian is attacked in the saying, “Drinking comes to a Kāyasth with his mother’s milk.”
The Jāt.
Considering the enormous strength of the agricultural population of India, one would have expected to find more proverbs directed against the great cultivating castes. Possibly the reason may be that they made most of the proverbs, and people can hardly be expected to sharpen their wit on their own shortcomings. In two Provinces, however, the rural Pasquin has let out very freely at the morals and manners of the Jāt, the typical peasant of the Eastern Punjab and the western districts of the United Provinces. You may as well, we are told, look for good in a Jāt as for weevils in a stone. He is your friend only so long as you have a stick in your hand. If he cannot harm you he will leave a bad smell as he goes by. To be civil to him is like giving treacle to a donkey. If he runs amuck it takes God to hold him. A Jāt’s laugh would break an ordinary man’s ribs. When he learns manners, he blows his nose with a mat, and there is a great run on the garlic. His baby has a plough-tail for a plaything. The Jāt stood on his own corn-heap and called out to the King’s elephant-drivers, “Hi there, what will you take for those little donkeys?” He is credited with practising fraternal polyandry, like the Venetian nobility of the early eighteenth century, as a measure of domestic economy, and a whole family are said to have one wife between them.
The Kunbi or Kurmi.
The Kunbi is not so roughly handled as the Jāt, but some unpleasant things are said about him. You will as soon grow a creeper on a rock as make him into a true friend. He is as crooked as a sickle, but you can beat him straight. If he gets a stye on his eyelid he is as savage as a bull. He is so obstinate that he plants thorns across the path. If it rains in the Hathiya asterism (end of September), and there is a bumper crop, he gives his wife gold ear-rings. You may know her by the basket on her head and the baby on either hip.
The Barber.
In the peculiar ways of the artisans and of the castes who are engaged in personal service the makers of proverbs have found abundant material for vituperative sarcasm. Of the village barber, who is also a marriage broker, a surgeon, a chiropodist, and a quack, it is said, “Among men most deceitful is the barber, among birds the crow, among things of the water the tortoise”—a sentiment reminding one how on a celebrated occasion Br’er Tarrypin outwitted Br’er Rabbit. Barbers, doctors, pleaders, prostitutes—all must have cash down. A barber learns by shaving fools, for which reason you should stick to your barber but change your washerman, since a new Dhobī washes clean. You may hammer a barber on the head with a shoe, but you will not make him hold his tongue. A barber found a purse, and all the world knew it. Of the inquisitive barber the wise say, “Throw a dog a morsel to stop his mouth,” which, if applied to the modern representative of pertinacious curiosity, might read, “Choke off a reporter with a scrap of stale news.” A barber out of work bleeds the wall or shaves a cat to keep his hand in. A barber’s penny, all profit and no risk. A burglary at a barber’s: stolen, three pots of combings! If you go back four generations you will find that your uncle was a barber, the suggestion being that the barber is sometimes unduly intimate with the inmates of the zenana.
The Goldsmith.
Trust not the goldsmith; he is no man’s friend, and his word is worthless. If you have never seen a tiger, look at a cat; if you have never seen a thief, look at a Sonār. The goldsmith, the tailor and the weaver are too sharp for the angel of death; God alone knows where to have them. A Sonār will rob his mother and sister; he will filch gold even from his wife’s nose-ring; if he cannot steal his belly will burst with longing. He will ruin your ornament by substituting base metal for the gold you gave him, and will clamour for wages into the bargain. A pair of rogues: the goldsmith and the man who sifts his ashes for scraps.
The Potter.
The potter gets off cheaper than the rest; his honesty is not impeached, though his intelligence is held up to ridicule, and there is a vein of philosophy in some of the sayings about him. He is always thinking of his pots, and if he falls out with his wife he finds a solace in pulling his donkey’s ears. But when the clay is on the wheel the potter may shape it as he will, though the clay rejoins, “Now you trample on me, one day I shall trample on you.” Turned on the wheel yet no better for it; praise not the pot till it has been fired; are general proverbs of life to which there are numerous parallels. If you are civil to a potter he will neither respect you nor will he sell you his pots. The frequency of petty thefts in India is illustrated by the saying, “The potter can sleep sound; no one will steal his clay.” He lives penuriously, and his own domestic crockery consists of broken pots. He is a stupid fellow—in a deserted village even a potter is a scribe—and his wife is a meddlesome fool, who is depicted as burning herself, like a Hindu wife, on the carcase of the Dhobi’s donkey (Dhobī ke gadhe par Kumhārin sati hūī).
The Blacksmith.
A blacksmith’s single stroke is worth a goldsmith’s hundred; but a Lohār is a bad friend; he will either burn you with fire or stifle you with smoke. His shop is always in an untidy mess; it is like the place where donkeys roll. Sparks are the lot of the blacksmith’s legs. Such is his good nature that a monkey begged of him a pair of anklets. But you should not buy his pet maina, even if you can get it for a farthing, for the bird will drive you mad by mimicking the noise of the hammer. “To sell a needle in the Lohārs’ quarter,” is one of the Indian analogues of our “‘Coals to Newcastle.’” “Before the smith can make a screw he must learn to make a nail” is a proverbial truism apparently of comparatively modern origin.
The Carpenter.
The carpenter thinks of nothing but wood, and his wife walks and talks in time to the noise of the plane. When out of work he keeps his hand in by planing his friends’ buttocks. “The carpenter’s face” is cited as a type of unpunctuality, since it is never to be seen at the time when he promised to come. “A whore’s oath and a Sutār’s chip” are examples of worthlessness. A fool of a Barhāi has neither chisel nor adze and wants to be the village carpenter!
The oil-presser and dealer in oil.
The oil-presser is no man’s friend; he earns a rupee and calls it eight annas. He sits at ease while his mill goes round, and beguiles his hours of leisure by inventing improper stories, so that when two Telis meet their talk is unfit for publication. His unfortunate bullock is always blindfold, and walks miles and miles without getting any further. Once upon a time the bullock was lost, and the Teli is still looking for the peg to which it was tied. On another occasion his bullock took to fighting and the owner was sued before the Kāzi for damages. The Kāzi’s finding ran thus: “What made the beast fight? The oil-cake you fed it on; so give me the ox and pay damages into the bargain.” His wife saves a little oil by giving short measure to her customers, but “God takes all at once” when the jar breaks and the thick dust sucks up its contents. His daughter, on the other hand, is represented as giving herself airs and wondering what oil-cake can be.
The Tailor.
The tailor, the goldsmith and the weaver, these three are too sharp for the angel of death; God alone knows where to have them. The tailor’s “this evening” and the shoemaker’s “next morning” never come. However sharp his sight, a Darzi sees nothing, because he cannot take his eyes off his work. The influence of Hindu caste on Muhammadans is illustrated by the saying, “A Darzi’s son is a Darzi and must sew as long as he lives.” A Darzi steals your cloth and makes you pay for sewing it. When a tailor is out of work he sews up his son’s mouth. The estimation in which he is held by his neighbours may be gauged by the saying, “A snake in a tailor’s house: who wants to kill it?”
The Washerman.
All the world have their clothes washed, but the Dhobi is always unclean (ceremonially), and to see him the first thing in the morning is sure to bring bad luck. His finery is never his own, but no one has so many changes of linen as a Dhobi. He will not hesitate to use the king’s scarf as a loin cloth; at his wedding the clothes of his customers are spread as carpets for the guests; and his son is the dandy of the village on a whistle and a bang, that is to say, by wearing other people’s clothes which his father washes by giving them a bang on a stone and whistling. As for soap, none is used unless there are enough Dhobis to set up competition. When there is a robbery in the Dhobi’s house the neighbours lose their clothes. He tears people’s clothes and says it was the wind, but he is careful not to damage his father’s things. You should change your Dhobi as you change your linen, for a new Dhobi washes clean. In a Koiri village the Dhobi is the accountant, for he is the only man who can add two and two together. He knows when the village is poor just as the orderly knows when his master has been degraded. The Dhobi’s donkey is habitually overworked, and must carry huge bundles of linen while “its life oozzes out of its eyes.”
The Fisherman.
The occupation of fishing ranks rather low as it involves the taking of life, but most Indians are great fish-eaters and one would have expected to find more proverbs dealing with the subject. The few that I have collected seem to suggest that the manners of fishing folk are much the same everywhere. “A fisherman’s tongue” corresponds to our “Billingsgate”; a Māchhi woman will scold even when she is dead; three clouts from an oilwoman are better than three kisses from a fishwife. There is a touch of local colour in the Sind saying, “Sometimes the float is uppermost, sometimes the fisherman,” a reference to the practice of fishing balanced face downwards on an earthen pot which is liable to break or capsize.
The Weaver.
In all parts of India the stupidity of the weaver, especially of the Muhammadan weaver (Jolāhā), is the staple subject of proverbial philosophy. His loom being sunk in the ground, he is said to dig a pit and fall into it himself. If he has a pot of grain he thinks himself a Rājā. He goes out to cut grass when even the crows are flying home to roost. He finds the hind peg of a plough, and proposes to start farming on the strength of it. If there are eight Jolāhās and nine huqqas, they fight for the odd one. The Jolāhā goes to see a ram fight and gets butted himself. Being one of a company of twelve who had safely forded a river, he can only find eleven, as he forgets to count himself, and straightway goes off to bury himself in the belief that, as he is missing, he must be dead. Some Jolāhās walking across country come to a field of linseed looking blue in the moonlight; they wonder how deep the water is and hope that all of them can swim. A Jolāhā gets into his boat and forgets to weigh the anchor; after rowing all night he finds himself at home and rejoices in the thought that the village has followed him out of pure affection. A crow snatches a piece of bread from a Jolāhā’s child and flies with it to the roof; the prudent father takes away the ladder before he gives the child any more. A Jolāhā hears the Korān being read and bursts into tears; on being asked what passage moves him so, he explains that the wagging beard of the Mullā reminded him of a favourite goat that he had lost. When his dogs bark at a tiger he proceeds to whip his child. He has no sense of propriety; he will crack indecent jokes with his mother and sister, and his wife will pull her father’s beard. As a workman he is dilatory and untrustworthy. He will steal a reel of thread when he gets the chance; he has his own standard of time; he lies like a Chamār; and even if you see him brushing the newly woven cloth, you must not believe him when he says that it is ready.
The Tanner and Shoemaker.
Below these more or less respectable members of rural society, we find a number of outcast groups, village menials, or broken tribes some of whom pollute the high-caste man even at a distance, while others are guilty of the crowning enormity of eating beef. Among these the Chamār, tanner, shoemaker, cobbler, and cattle-poisoner, is the subject of a number of injurious reflexions. Though he is as wily as a jackal, he is also so stupid that he sits on his awl and beats himself for stealing it. He laments that he cannot tan his own skin. He knows nothing beyond his last, and the shortest way to deal with him is to beat him with a shoe of his own making, a practical axiom which is expressed in the saying that “old shoes should be offered to the shoemaker’s god.” “Stitch, stitch” is the note of the cobblers’ quarter; “stink, stink” of the street where the tanners live. The Chamār’s wife goes barefoot, but his daughter, when she has just attained puberty, is as graceful as an ear of millet. The functions of the Chamārin as the Mrs. Gamp of the village are rather inelegantly referred to in the saying, “There is no hiding the belly from the midwife.” The hides and bones of dead cattle are the perquisite of the Chamār, and in some of the great grazing districts he is credibly suspected of assisting nature by means of a bolus of arsenic, craftily wrapped in a leaf or a petal of the mahua flower, and dropped where the cattle are feeding. A humorous allusion to this practice, which is exceedingly difficult to detect, may be traced in the proverb which represents the Chamār as enquiring after the health of the village headman’s buffalo. In these latter days Chamārs are no longer forbidden to drink Ganges water, and this perversion of the old order of things is said to have caused “the righteous to die while the wicked live.”
The Dom.
The Doms, among whom we find scavengers, vermin-eaters, executioners, basket-makers, musicians, and professional burglars, probably represent the remnants of a Dravidian tribe crushed out of recognition by the invading Aryans and condemned to menial and degrading occupations. Sir G. Grierson has thrown out the picturesque suggestion that they are the ancestors of the European gipsies, and that Rom or Romany is nothing more than a variant of Dom. In the ironical language of the proverbs the Dom figures as “the lord of death” because he provides the wood for the Hindu funeral pyre. He is ranked with Brāhmans and goats as a creature useless in time of need. A common and peculiarly offensive form of abuse is to tell a man that he has eaten a Dom’s leavings. A series of proverbs represents him as making friends with members of various castes and faring ill or well in the process. Thus the Kanjar steals his dog, and the Gūjar loots his house; on the other hand the barber shaves him for nothing, and the silly Jolāhā makes him a suit of clothes. His traditions associate him with donkeys, and it is said that if these animals could excrete sugar Doms would no longer be beggars. “A Dom in a palanquin and a Brāhman on foot” is a type of society turned upside down. Nevertheless, outcast as he is, the Dom occupies a place of his own in the fabric of Indian society. At funerals he provides the wood and gets the corpse-clothes as his perquisite; he makes the discordant music that accompanies a marriage procession; and baskets, winnowing-fans, and wicker articles in general are the work of his hands.
The Mahārs and Dhed.
In the west of India Mahārs and Dheds hold much the same place as the Dom. In the walled villages of the Marāthā country the Mahār is the scavenger, watchman and gate-keeper. His presence pollutes; he is not allowed to live in the village; and his miserable shanty is huddled up against the wall outside. But he challenges the stranger who comes to the gate, and for this and other services he is allowed various perquisites, among them that of begging for broken victuals from house to house. He offers old blankets to his god, and his child’s playthings are bones. The Dhed’s status is equally low. If he looks at a water jar he pollutes its contents; if you run up against him by accident, you must go off and bathe. If you annoy a Dhed he sweeps up the dust in your face. When he dies, the world is so much the cleaner. If you go to the Dheds’ quarter you find there nothing but a heap of bones.
The Pāriah.
This relegation of the low castes to a sort of Ghetto is carried to great lengths in the south of India where the intolerance of the Brāhman is very conspicuous. In the typical Madras village the Pāriahs—“dwellers in the quarter” (pārā) as this broken tribe is now called*—live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm leaves known as the pārchery, the squalor and untidiness of which present the sharpest contrast to the trim street of tiled masonry houses where the Brāhmans congregate. “Every village,” says the proverb, “has its Pāriah hamlet”—a place of pollution the census of which is even now taken with difficulty owing to the reluctance of the high-caste enumerator to enter its unclean precincts. “A palm-tree,” says another, “casts no shade; a Pāriah has no caste and rules.” The popular estimate of the morals of the Pāriah comes out in the saying, “He that breaks his word is a Pāriah at heart”; while the note of irony predominates in the pious question, “If a Pāriah offers boiled rice will not the god take it?” the implication being that the Brāhman priests who take the offerings to idols are too greedy to inquire by whom they are presented.
The Bhīl.
The organized animistic tribes, who are wholly outside the bounds of Hinduism, seem for the most part to have escaped the attention of the makers of proverbs, probably because they have no specific place in the communal life of the village. The Bhīl alone, hunter, blackmailer, and highway robber, has impressed his curious personality upon the people of the jungle country of Western India and Rajputana. He is, we are told, the king of the jungle; his arrow flies straight. He is always ready for a fight, but he is also a man of his word, and with a Bhil for escort your life is safe. If you manage to please him he is a Bhīl; if you rub him the wrong way up he is the son of a dog. He has a large number of children, and in his household there is no dawdling as the family is always on the move.
From the wilds of Assam comes the quaint saying, “The Nāga’s wife gets a baby; the Nāga himself takes the medicine.” This sounds rather like a reminiscence of the couvade, but it may be nothing more than a reflexion on the intelligence of the Nāgas.
Comparitive Proverbs.
Of the proverbs discussed in the foregoing paragraphs each has for its subject a particular caste and contains no reference to any other. I now turn to a class of proverbs which it will be convenient to group separately, since each of them deals with several castes and seizes upon their points of difference or resemblance. These comparative proverbs are curious in themselves, and throw a good deal of light on the relative estimation accorded to different castes by popular opinion. Here again the Brāhman bulks large and figures in queer company. A black Brāhman, a fair Sūdra, an under-sized Musalmān, a ghar-jamai (a son-in-law who lives with and on his father-in-law), an adopted son are all birds of a feather. Trust not a black Brāhman or a fair Pāriah. A dark Brāhman, a fair Chuhra, a woman with a beard—these three are contrary to nature. The Kunbi died from seeing a ghost; the Brāhman from wind in the stomach; the goldsmith from bile. The first is superstitious; the second over-eats himself; the third sits too long over his fire. A Brāhman met a barber; “God be with you” said the one, but the other held up his looking-glass, thus countering the Brāhman’s demand for a fee for his professional blessing by asserting his own claim to be paid for shaving people. Brāhmans are made to eat, Bhavaiyas to play and sing, Kolis to commit robbery, and widows to mourn. The Mulla, the Bhāt, the Brāhman, and the Dom, these four were not born on giving day. A Brāhman for a minister, a Bhāt for favourite, and the Rājā’s fate is sealed. A Dom, a Brāhman, and a goat are of no use in time of need. If you cannot ruin yourself by keeping a Brāhman servant, taking money from a Kasāi, or begetting too many daughters, you will do it by going to law with bigger men. The Brāhman is lord of the water; the Rajput lord of the land; the Kāyasth lord of the pen; and the Khatri lord of the back, i.e., a coward. A Khatri woman brings forth sons always ; a Brāhman woman only now and then—a rather cryptic utterance which may perhaps be a hit at the practice of female infanticide imputed to the Khatris.
Kāyasths, Khatris, and cocks support their kin ; Brāhmans, Doms and Nāis destroy theirs. Bribe a Kāyasth ; feed a Brāhman ; water paddy and betel ; but kick a low-caste man. A Turk wants toddy ; a bullock wants grain ; a Brāhman wants mangoes ; and a Kāyasth wants an appointment. A Dhobi is better than a Kāyasth ; a Sonār is better than a cheat ; a dog is better than a deity ; and a jackal better than a Pandit. Kāzis, Kasbīs, Kasāis, and Kāyasths—the four bad K’s. There be three that dance in other people’s houses and profit by their misfortunes—the Kāyasth, the Baidya, and the Dalāl or tout who promotes litigation. You may know a good Kāyasth by his pen ; a good Rajput by his moustache ; and a good Baidya by his searching medicine. From the last sentiment it would appear that the messorum dura ilia are much the same all over the world and that the Indian cultivator, like the English villager, wants his physic nasty and wants it strong.
When the tax collector is a Jāt, the money-lender a Brāhman, and the ruler of the land a Baniya, these are signs of God’s wrath. Jāts, Bhāts, caterpillars and widows—all these should be kept hungry ; if they eat their fill they are sure to do harm. When a buffalo is full she refuses oil cake ; when a Baniya is well off he gives time to his debtors ; when a Jāt is flourishing he starts a quarrel ; when your banker is in a bad way he fastens upon you. When the Jāt prospers he shuts up the path (by ploughing over it) ; when the Karār (money-lender) prospers he shuts up the Jāt.
Loot the Baniya if you meet him, but let the Pathān go on his way. Better have no friends at all than take up with an Afghān, a Kamboh, or a rascally Kashmīri. The crow, the Kamboh, and the Kalāl cherish their kin ; the Jāt, the buffalo, and the crocodile devour their kin. All castes are God’s creatures, but three castes are ruthless, the Ahīr, the Baniya, the Kasbi ; when they get a chance they have no shame.
There are three careless knaves, the washerman, the barber, and the tailor. “The goldsmith’s acid and the tailor’s tag.” This highly-condensed saying requires explanation ; it is a proverb of delay, the suggestion being that the Sonār tells you that your ornament is ready, all but the final cleaning with acid ; while the Darzi says that your coat is ready and only the tags for fastening it have to be sewn on. The Teli knows all about oil-seeds; the Shimpi (Kanarese tailor) all about lies; the village watchman all about thieves; the Lingāyat all about everything. The washerman knows who is poor in the village; the goldsmith knows whose ornaments are of pure gold.
Bābhans, dogs, and Bhāts are always at war with their kin. Seven Chamārs are not as mean as one Bābhan, and seven Bābhans are not as mean as one Nuniyār Baniya. In no man’s land one makes friends with Gūjars and Gaddis. The Gareri got drunk when he saw the Ahīr in liquor. The Kāchhi is not a good caste; there is no virtue in a Māli; and the Lodhā is a poor creature who ploughs with tears in his eyes.
The Parsi.
We may pass from these genre pictures of the standard types of Indian village life to groups defined by religion rather than by caste, but which nevertheless are regarded as castes by popular usage. Conspicuous among these are the Pārsis, concerning whom many proverbs are current in Gujarāt, the country where they first appeared after leaving Persia. Considering how much the Pārsis have done for Bombay, both by their spirit of enterprise and by their munificent donations to public purposes, it is a little surprising to find them so savagely attacked in the proverbs of their earliest home in India. The Pārsi, it is said, loses no time in breaking his word; a Pārsi youth never tells the truth; a bankrupt Pārsi starts a liquor shop, and celebrates the day of Zoroaster by drinking brandy. Domestic scandal is hinted at in the punning proverb, “All is dark (andhyārā) in a house where you find an andhyāru or Pārsi priest.” “Oh, Dastūrji,” says a supposed penitent, “how shall my sins be forgiven?” “First present a gold cat and a silver necklace, and then we will see.” The proverb, “If a Pārsi grows rich he takes a second wife,” has ceased to be applicable since the reproach of polygamy has been removed by the Pārsi Marriage Act, a self-denying ordinance passed at the instance of the Pārsis themselves. The influence of their Indian environment on the Pārsis is illustrated by the saying, “The Pārsi woman offers a cocoanut at the Holi,” and by the curious fact that the mitre-shaped hat worn by old-fashioned Pārsis is merely a pasteboard copy of a Gujarāti pagri or turban. It is interesting and characteristic to find the Pārsis asserting their own superiority in retaliatory proverbs. “Crows your uncles and Pārsis your fathers” is their rejoinder, in the suggestive style of Oriental innuendo, to the Hindus who call them crows on account of their custom of exposing their dead. “The Hindu worships stones,” say the Pārsis, “the Musalmān bows down to saints; the Pārsi religion is as pure as the water of the Ganges.” Finally, we have the quaint saying, “A Pārsi’s stroke, like a cannon ball,” which one would like to trace to the hard-hitting achievements of Pārsi cricketers.
The Ascetics.
In India, as in mediæval Europe, the hypocrisy, the immorality and the shameless rapacity of ascetics and religious mendicants move the indignation of the proverbial philosopher. Mendicancy is the veil that covers the lion. An ascetic’s friendship spells ruin to his friends. Money will buy the most pious of saints. When a man cannot get a wife he turns ascetic. When his crop has been burnt the Jāt becomes a fakīr. When fish are in season the Jogi loses his head. One widow has more virtue than a hundred Dandis. The Jogi and the profligate pass sleepless nights. “She went to the fakīr to learn morals; the holy man stripped off her trousers.” A sect mark on his forehead and ten rosaries round his neck—in appearance a saint, but at heart in love with a prostitute. Promise a Brāhman nothing, but promise a mendicant less. The local Jogi gets no alms. “Reverend father, what a crowd of disciples!” “They will vanish, my son, as soon as they are hungry.” “What has a saint to do with dainties?” “If there is no butter-milk I can manage with curds.” “Oh, mother, give me some sweets; they are very good for the eyes.” “My son, if you have a taste for milk and cream you should turn Nānakshāhi.” “As soon as the ducks lay eggs the devotees eat them up.”
In examining the proverbs relating to village life, no attempt has been made to group the material by provinces. The atmosphere of rural society is very much the same all over India, and the sayings which emanate from it breathe everywhere much the same spirit and partake of the same general character. Except in Sind, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province, where the Hindus form an insignificant minority, the proverbial philosophy of the village takes its cue from Hinduism, and everywhere vents its spleen on the familiar figures of the extortionate priest, the greedy mendicant, the grasping money-lender, the garrulous barber, the pilfering goldsmith, the knavish washerman, the foolish weaver—all of them Hindus or Muhammadans grouped in occupational castes of the Hindu type.
The Muhammadans.
But in dealing with the specific proverbs which depict the foibles of Muhammadans it will be convenient to adopt a provincial arrangement. The bulk of the material is considerable, and it can hardly be grouped on any other principle; and the geographical distribution of Muhammadans happens to correspond pretty closely with the vital distinction noticed in an earlier chapter, between the Muhammadan who claims distinguished foreign descent and the native Indian converts who, in Bengal at any rate, were recruited from the dregs of the Hindu community, and embraced Islam as a short cut to social promotion.
In Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province.
The proverbs of Baluchistan and the North-West border furnish plentiful illustrations of the amenities current in a primitive tribal society, the members of which are endowed with a pretty sense of allusive humour and addicted to the vigorous prosecution of all conceivable forms of vendetta. The Afghān is faithless (Afghān be īmān). A Pashtun’s self-will will bring him to hell. A saint one moment, a devil the next, that is the Pathān. A Pathān’s enmity is like a dung fire. The Pathāns took the village and the Behnas (cotton carders) got swollen heads. A Pathān’s mouth waters the moment his hands are dry, i.e. he is hungry directly he has washed his hands after a meal. The weak antithesis of my rendering is a poor substitute for the crisp rhyme of the original, Hāth sūkhā Pāthān bhūkhā. “Be a thief, be a thief!” say the Afrīdi parents to their child as they pass it from one to the other through a hole in a wall, and thus baptize it in burglary. An Achakzai is a thief who will steal an empty flour bag. Here comes the Kākār besmeared with filth; when you meet him hit him with a stick; kick him out of the mosque and you will save trouble all round. A Masezai has no hope of God, and God has no hope of a Masezai. Though a Kāsi become a saint, he will still have a strain of the devil in him. A Khatak can ride, but he is a man of but one charge; so say the enemies of the Khataks, the Marwāts. The Khataks retaliate with the pleasant saying, “Keep a Marwāt to look after asses, his stomach well filled and his feet well worn.” “A hundred Bhitanni ate a hundred sheep, so thriftless were they.” Hold up a rupee and you may see any Mohmand, whether man or woman.
“Blood for blood” is the watch-word of the Baloch, a tribe recruited from all sorts of masterless men, and held together mainly by the bond of the blood-feud. Of themselves they say in poetical strain : " The hills are the fortress of the Baloch ; for a steed he has white sandals ; for a brother his sharp sword " ; and of the chief of Las Bela, " Though the Jam be the Jâm, yet is he by descent a Jadgal (converted Jât) and therefore not the equal of the princely race of Baloch." To these vapouring s their neighbours have the vulgar retort, " There goes a Baloch with his trousers full of wind," a reflection at once on the boastfulness and on the expansive nether garments of the average Baloch tribesman. The democratic spirit of the Baloch is illustrated by the saying, " One Sanni and seven chiefs." To common honesty they are strangers. " The Baloch who steals gains paradise for his ancestors even unto seven generations." Wisdom begged in vain for mercy from the Rinds (the conquering tribe of Balochistan) and decency from the Meds (the seafaring people of the Makrân Coast). The black-faced Meds are like tamarisk sparks, without any glow of courage. The Med sailor lives by the wind and by the wind he dies. The Med is wrapped up in his voyage, and his wife is wrapped up with her lover.
No one seems to have a good word for the Brâhûi. He is no man’s friend ; he is the striped snake that bit the Prophet ; he is always coveting other people’s property ; he will quarrel over an inheritance even with his mother, against whom he enforces the tribal custom by which Brâhûi women are excluded from succession. If you have never seen an ignorant lump come and look at a Brâhûi ; he is the tail of a dog and his good is evil. (The word sharr which means " good " in Arabic means " evil " in Brâhûi.) The Jhalâwâns of Khuzdar are without honour ; the Kalatis have ever been faithless ; the army of the Kurds vanishes like the spark of a burning juniper ; the Muhammad Shâhi are blood-suckers ; the Raisâni usurers ; if you ask a jackass whether he has any relations, he will tell you that the Sâssoli boast of being his cousins. The Mengals eat half-cooked meat, and " a Mengal’s roast " is a proverbial synonym for an immature scheme. The Lahri alone escape general condemnation ; their honesty is rated so high that in a country where promises are ratified by shaking hands " a Lahri’s two fingers " ranks as a typical guarantee of faithful performance.
In Sind and Gujarât.
In Sind and Gujarât the pretentious poverty and the domestic squabbles of the Miyân or petty Musalman landholder are a favourite subject of ridicule. The Miyân is passing rich on a mat and a tooth-brush; the pole of his carriage is spliced with string, and he stops at every grog-shop on the road. The Miyān’s mare could only carry him to the end of the village. Look at the Miyān’s new fashion: his coat is tied up in three places! The Miyān swaggers abroad but is meek as a mouse at home; when he comes back from tinning pots and pans, Bībī, his wife, combs his beard; he is only a ser and she is a ser and a quarter. A cheerful couple, Miyān and Bībī! when he broke his stick on her, she smashed the water-jar. The Bībī cries for sweets and the Miyān licks the lamps in the mosque. The Miyān cannot get it and the Bībī does not like it (sour grapes). The Miyān has no shoes to beat his wife with. The Miyān’s beard on fire, and Bībī thinks he is warming himself. Miyān a fop and Bībī sweeping the house. The Miyān killed a crow and swore that he had shot a tiger. A Miyān’s talk, like a kick from a fly. The Miyān is ripe for the grave and the Bībī is ripe for the bridal bed. (January and May.) “Why weeping, Miyān?” “My wife died to-day.” “Why laughing, Miyān?” “I marry a new one to-day.” God is straight, but the Miyān is crooked: if he is going north he says he is going south. “Time to get up, Miyān!” “All right, give me a hand.” When Miyān goes to Mecca, Bībī goes to Mālwa. A Miyān’s cat; a Miyān’s cow buffalo. (Both half-starved.)
The Jāt Musalmān cultivator of Sind is a person of dirty habits; two blankets and a half last him a lifetime. If you are civil to him he will knock you down. He is a merciless and importunate creditor—“the Jāt’s farthing will break the skin while the Baniya’s hundred rupees will not hurt you.” If you rely on the word of a Jāt you will come to grief, yet sometimes he meets his match: his wife soaked the yarn to make it heavy, but the Baniya weighed it with false weights. Educate a Jāt and he becomes a nuisance to gods and men.
In Punjab.
Throughout Northern India the Mullā (priest) and the Kāzi (marriage registrar and judge) fare badly at the hands of the popular oracle. The face of a Mullā conceals the heart of a butcher. The Kāzi will drink if he gets the liquor for nothing. The Mullā was drowned because he had never given anything to anybody, and could not bear to give his hand even to save his life.
A Kāzi’s verandah is a place to sit in after meals, when you do not mind waiting for a decision long delayed, and “a Kāzi’s judgment” is a synonym for injustice. Yet during his life all men honour the Kāzi; his bitch may give pups where she pleases, and when she dies the whole town is at the funeral. But when the Kāzi himself dies, not a soul follows his coffin to the grave. So every one strokes the Mullā’s cow until the Mullā dies from a surfeit of milk and parched rice. Your love, it is said, is like that of the Mullā who feeds fowls in order to eat them. A Mullā’s outing takes him as far as the mosque where he looks for alms. The horse kicked him off, but the Mullā boasted of his ride. The Mullā is a thief and the Banga who calls to prayer is his witness. Half a doctor is a danger to life; half a Mullā is a danger to faith.
In the United Provinces.
In the United Provinces they say, “A Musalmān, a wasp and a parrot are no man’s friends; in time of trouble they will turn on you and sting or bite.” When rich, a Mīr; when poor, a Fakīr; when dead, a Pīr. Sesamum, molasses, and the love of a Musalmān are sweet at first but afterwards turn to bitterness. Here and in the ironical question, “Since when has the Bībī become a Brāhmani,” the allusion is to the facilities for divorce among Muhammadans. Where there are Musalmāns there is population; but their love is the friendship of a snake; even two families of them cannot agree. A Musalmān takes back the gift he has given, a reference to the practice of resuming a married daughter’s dowry at her death. The true Musalmāns lie buried in their graves, and their faith lies buried in their books. A Musalmān convert cries “Allah! Allah!” all day long. Mīrsāhib is indeed of high family with his smooth cheeks and his empty stomach. “Mīrsāhib! Times are hard; you must hold on your turban with both hands.”
In Behar.
From Behar we get the following: A real Miyān is a Miyān indeed but some Miyāns are Pinjāras (cotton teasers). When the Miyān (family tutor) is at the door it is a bad look-out for the dog. A farthing’s worth of soap makes the Miyān a Bābu.
In Madras.
The south of India also treats the subject from the Hindu point of view. The country that has no crows has no Musalmāns. What does a beef-eater know of decent language? If girls are sold for a farthing a-piece, don’t buy a Musalmāni. A Musalmān ascetic’s butter-milk is toddy.
Provincial and local proverbs.
A curious series of proverbs is occupied with the delineation, in none too polished language, of provincial and local characteristics. “Never make friends with a Deccani,” say the Gujarātis, “he is as false as a latrine is foul; put not your faith in a three-cornered pagri (turban).” The Marāthas’ retort courteous is: “The fool of a Gujarāti, kick him first and then he may understand what you want.” “A Dravidian’s nose-scratching” is another Marātha proverb aimed at the devious and insincere ways of the Dravidian Brāhman who is represented as scratching his nose by putting his hand round the back of his neck.
As has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, the strong sense of family and racial obligations, and the remarkable capacity for adapting themselves to modern conditions of life which distinguish the Bengalis have led to their diffusion all over Northern India, where they exercise considerable influence in certain circles. But these domestic and public virtues, while they have gained for Bengalis a share in all grades of salaried employment proportionate to their industry and ability, have somehow, possibly for this very reason, failed to endear them to the other Indian races; and the supposed characteristics of this type, the most marked and the most provincial in India, are glanced at in a series of needlessly spiteful proverbs. Their dark complexion and the habit imputed to them of chewing betel incessantly are referred to in the guise of a traveller’s observation:—“I have seen the land of Bengal, where teeth are red, and faces black.” There is nothing to show that Bengalis chew betel more assiduously than other Indians. But both betel and areca nut grow well in Bengal; the province is very rich and very lightly taxed, and the people are able to indulge in small luxuries. “Bengal is the home of magic and the women are full of witchery,” and “If a Bengali is a man what is a devil” serve to illustrate the suspicion which attaches to people who live in a distant country far away from the great centres of religious orthodoxy and social propriety, and may perhaps be a specific allusion to the debased forms of Tantric worship alleged to be current in Bengal. “A hungry Bengali cries ‘Rice, rice’”—is the gibe of the fighting races at a diet associated in their minds with effeminacy and cowardice. “Twelve Bengalis cannot cut off a goat’s ear” imputes feebleness and timidity in more direct terms. “An Eastern donkey with a Western bray” is a hit at the Bengali Bābus who affect European manners and dress. The Assamese, a type closely akin to the Bengali, are attacked for their vanity and social pretensions. “A pagri on his head and nakedness below, the Assamese wishes to lead the way.” These ill-natured witticisms savour of the malice of the unsuccessful competitor, the idle apprentice who in a well-regulated world would be debarred from manufacturing proverbs for general consumption. While making general accusations of cowardice they take no account of the proficiency of the educated Bengalis of the present day in football and hockey, games not unaccompanied with hard knocks. They forget that, in the Eastern districts of Bengal, the monotony of rural existence is relieved by Homeric battles in which the favourite weapon is a heavy fish spear made by splitting a bamboo into a cluster of branches, each of which is armed with formidable steel barbs. People who fight half-naked with these appalling implements can afford to disregard the charge of personal timidity. Worse still, the proverbs ignore such instances of conspicuous gallantry on the part of Bengalis as was furnished a few months ago by a Calcutta undergraduate, Nafar Chandra Kundu, who let himself down into a sewer reeking with poisonous gas in the almost hopeless attempt to rescue three municipal coolies who were lying there insensible and whose fate he himself shared. Courage of this order is rare anywhere in the world.
The swagger of the ubiquitous Mārwāri money-lender, who pretends that he is a Rājā in his own country, is thus ridiculed : “For houses hurdles of madār ; for hedges heaps of withered thorn; millet for bread, horse-peas for pulse; this is thy kingdom, Rājā of Mārwār !” Another proverb alludes to the shape of their pagris and their capacity for getting on in the world. “The three-tufted ones (Mārwāris), the red-faced ones (Europeans), and the cactus plant cannot live without increasing.”
General Proverbs.
Throughout this chapter the endeavour has been to arrange the material on inductive lines, so that the reader of what to many people will be strange sayings from an unknown world shall be led by easy stages from the particular to the general, from the concrete to the abstract, from reflexions on the vices and foibles of individual castes to the larger criticism of Indian life, as viewed through the medium of caste ideas and prepossessions, which is put forth in some of the more philosophical proverbs. Commencing, therefore, with a gallery of village portraits, we proceeded to examine the proverbs which combine and compare the various types, passing on to those which deal with the larger groupings of sect and religion and the wider field of local and provincial characteristics. The series may now be closed with some instances of the most general type of Indian proverbs, those which are concerned with the caste system as a whole and illustrate the extent of its influence. Proverbs of this kind are not numerous, and one would gladly have more of them, for they breathe a tolerant spirit which contrasts pleasantly with the spiteful malevolence of some of the rural portraits.
The authority of caste is of course uncompromisingly asserted. “When plates are interchanged,” that is to say, when members of different castes intermarry, is a proverb of the impossible. “The high-born man mourns the loss of his caste as he would the loss of his nose,” and “The caste killeth and the caste maketh alive,” seem to refer to the vital issues involved in the decisions of caste tribunals which may make or mar the lives of those who come before them. In view of these grave possibilities, the discreet advice is given, “Having drunk water from his hands, it is foolish to ask about his caste.” To take water from low-caste people is to incur ceremonial pollution, entailing expulsion from caste pending submission to a disagreeable purificatory ritual and the payment of a heavy fine; the least said, therefore, the soonest mended. “A low-caste man is like a musk-rat, if you smell him you remember it.” “As the ore is like the mine, so a child is like its caste.” “The speech fits the caste as the peg fits the whole;” the idea being that you can tell a high-caste man by his refined language and accent. “I have sold my limbs not my caste,” says a servant to his master when he is asked to do something derogatory to his caste.
Along with these sayings affirming the supremacy of the modern doctrine of the necessity and inviolability of caste, we find others which seem to recall an earlier order of ideas when castes were not so rigidly separated, when members of different castes could intermarry, and when, within certain limits, caste itself was regarded as a matter of personal merit rather than of mere heredity. “Love laughs at caste distinctions.” “Caste springs from actions not from birth.” “Castes may differ; virtue is everywhere the same.” “The Vaisyas and Sūdras must have come first, and it was from them that Brāhmans and Kshatriyas were made.” “Though your caste is low, your crime is none the less.” “Every uncle says that his caste is the best.” In others again we hear the croaking tone of the laudator temporis acti to whom all change is astumbling-block and a reproach. “The Hindu gods have fled to Dwārka; the Musalmān saints to Mecca; under British rule the Dheds shove you about.” The Dheds, as has been explained above, are one of the scavenger castes of Bombay, whose mere touch is pollution. “Nowadays money is caste.” “In old times men looked to caste when they married their children, now they look only to money.” “The Pandit reads his Scriptures and the Mullā his Qurān; men make a thousand shows yet find not God.” “To the Hindu Rām is dear, to the Musalmān Rahīm; they hate with a deadly hatred but know not the reason why.”
No useful purpose would be served by attempting a comparative study of the Indian proverbs relating to caste and the European proverbs regarding trades and professions. Where the environment and the point of view differ so widely, there is really little opening for comparison between the two series of sayings. The Indian proverbs here collected stand by themselves; they centre round caste; and caste, as elaborated in India, is a unique phenomenon. It would be possible to pick out from the mass of material a few parallels between the shortcomings of tailors, barbers and shoemakers in Europe and in India; but neither the contrasts nor the correspondences are specially interesting, and two trades which figure largely in European proverbial literature—those of the miller and the baker—are conspicuous for their absence from the Indian group of portraits. In the East people grind their own corn and bake their own bread, and have no occasion to sharpen their wit on the rascals who steal the one and adulterate the other.
It is more instructive to note the difference between the popular conception of the Brāhman as illustrated by the proverbs and the ideal picture of him presented in the Institutes of Manu—the moral text-book of the orthodox Hindu. Here we read how the Brāhman is by right the lord of the whole creation, since through his mouth the gods continually consume the sacrificial viands and the manes receive the offerings made for the benefit of the dead. Other mortals subsist through his benevolence; he can create new worlds and new guardians of the world, and can deprive the gods of their divine station. Though Brāhmans employ themselves in all sorts of mean occupations, they must be honoured in every way; for each of them is a very great deity. To slay a Brāhman is mortal sin; whoever threatens him with physical violence will wander for a hundred years in hell; the man who seizes his property will feed in another world on the leavings of vultures. Even the cardinal duty of veracity is dispensed with in the interest of the Brāhman. In the chapter on witnesses the obligation to tell the truth is strongly insisted on and is enforced by the most terrible penalties. “Naked and shorn, tormented with hunger and thirst and deprived of sight, shall the man who gives false evidence go with a potsherd to beg food at the door of his enemy.” Yet it is also written: “No crime, causing loss of caste, is committed by swearing falsely to women the objects of one’s desire, at marriages, for the sake of fodder for a cow, or of fuel, and in order to show favour to a Brāhman.” *
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF INDIAN PROVERBS.
ADAMS, LIEUT.-COL. A. The Western Rajputana States, 2nd ed. London, 1900. CHELAKESAVARAYĀ MUDALIĀR, T. Parallel Proverbs, Tamil and English. Madras, 1903. CHRISTIAN, J. Bihar Proverbs. London, 1891. CROOKE, W. A Rural and Agricultural Glossary for the North-West Provinces and Oudh. Calcutta, 1880. CROOKE, W. Tribes and Castes of the North-West Provinces and Oudh. Calcutta, 1896. ELLIOT, SIR H. M. Memoirs on the History, Folklore, and Distribution of the Races of North-West India, ed. J. Beames, London, 1869. FALLON, S. W. Hindustani English Dictionary. Benares, 1879. FALLON, S. W. Dictionary of Hindustani Proverbs, ed. Sir R. Temple. Benares, 1886. GANESH NĀRĀYAN DESHPANDE. A Dictionary of Marāthi Proverbs. Poona, 1900. GANGĀ DATT UPRETI PANDIT. Proverbs and Folklore of Kumaun and Garhwal. Lodiana, 1894. GĀNGADHAR GOVIND SĀPKAR. Marathi Proverbs. Poona, 1872. GRAY, J. Ancient Proverbs from the Burmese. London, 1886. GRIERSON, G. A. Bihār Peasant Life. Calcutta, 1885. GURDON, CAPT. P. R. Some Assamese Proverbs. Shillong, 1896. IBBETSON, D. C. J. Punjab Ethnography. Calcutta, 1883. ISHUREE DASS. Domestic Manners and Customs of the Hindus of Northern India. Benares, 1866. JAMJETJEE PETIT. Collection of Gujarati Proverbs. Bombay. JENSEN, REV. H. A Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs. Madras, 1897. LAL BIHARI DAY. Bengal Peasant Life. London, 1878. LAWRENCE, SIR W. R. The Valley of Kashmir. London, 1895. LONG, REV. J. Eastern Proverbs and Emblems. London, 1881. LYALL, J. B. Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Kangra District, Punjab. Lahore, 1865-72. MACONACHIE, J. R. Agricultural Proverbs of the Panjab. Lahore, 1890. MANWARING, REV. A. Marathi Proverbs, collected and translated. Oxford, 1899. NĀRĀYAN DĀMODAR CHHATRE. Marāthi Practical Proverbs. Poona, 1871. NATESA SĀSTRI, PANDIT. Familiar Tamil Proverbs. NESFIELD, J. C. A Brief View of the Caste System of the North-West Provinces and Oudh. Allahabad, 1885. PERCIVAL, P. Tamil Proverbs, with their English Translation, 3rd ed. Madras, 1874. PRABODH PRAKĀS SEN GUPTA. Dictionary of Proverbs. Calcutta, 1899. PURSER, W. E. and FANSHAWE, H. C. Settlement Report of the District of Rohtak. Lahore, 1880. RAVIPATI GURUVAYA GURU. A Collection of Telugu Proverbs, translated by Capt. M. W. Carr. Madras, 1868. ROCHIRĀM GAJUMAL. Handbook of Sindhi Proverbs. Karachi, 1895. Tamil Sayings and Proverbs on Agriculture. Madras. UPENDRO KRISHNA BONERJEA. Handbook of Proverbs, English and Bengali. Calcutta, 1891. WILSON, J. Grammar of Western Panjabi. Lahore, 1898.
Footnotes
- Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Proverbiorum Epitome retractata ab M. Io. Christ, Messerschmid, Lipsiæ, 1758.
† Dictionnaire des Spots ou Proverbes Wallons, Liège, 1863.
[*]: The Laws of Manu translated by G. Bühler, I, 93, 95, 101; IV., 165; VIII., 93, 112; IX., 235, 315, 319; XI., 26.