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 _Mahabharata_ 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 Nushirvan, 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 _Anvari 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."

* * * * *

"Chi