The Tale of the Tulsi Plant and Other Stories (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY IN WESTERN INDIA. I.--THE SAYINGS OF KATHIAWAK. The day has in England long gone by when the wise saws and well-worn sayings of some timehonoured member of the family carried weight in a discussion. If one practised in ordinary conversation the art of introducing happily rhyming proverbs, one would soon have no one left with whom to converse and beyond that of an intolerable bore one would have achieved no other reputation. Yet two hundred years ago, things were different. The Squire Westerns whom Macaulay in the famous third chapter of his history describes as ruling with an iron rod their feudal domains, yet standing awestruck in the London Streets at the sight of the Lord Mayor's show, used the old English proverbs as tbe staple buttress of their arguments. One can imagine what a formidable engine of oppression proverbs, such as A woman, a spaniel and a walnnt tree The more you beat them the better they be; and "Spare the rod, spoil the child " must have been when it was considered almost impious _to question the superior wisdom of one's forefathers. Indeed, I seem to have an unpleasant recollection in my own childhood of what then at any rate appeared to me to be a misuse of the latter aphorism. But the saws of Squire Western and the simples of his helpmeet have gone their way, and an English proverb now is hardly ever used, save to distort it into a paradox. Western India, however, has not yet reached the paradox stage of human development. And I have myself seen a happily applied proverb close more than once an intricate discussion, and an Indian proverb on a European's lips invariably fills a native audience with an immense and often excessive respect for his acquaintance with their language. Hereafter I may...