Page:The Dravidian Nights Entertainments.djvu/9

 keeping with English idioms, may he overlooked. I have tried my best to stick to the original where-ever possible. But translators are always said to be traitors. They are compelled, much against their conscience, to put in or leave out some portion or other of the original stories. My principal object in publishing these translations is not to show that I am any bit of an author or translator, but that stories in Tamil are in no way inferior in their richness of thought, soundness of morality and luxuriance of imagination, to the other stories of Oriental romance. This is the great object which has principally influenced me in placing this translation, [sic] before English readers. Till now there has been a great negligence towards our national stories among, I am almost ashamed to say, oar own Tamil public. Very few Tamil scholars, who are Agastyas in the other departments of Tamil literature, have ever given even a mite of their learned attention to the folk-lore and mediæval tales of their country. While European scholars like Messrs. Temple, Clouston, Knowles, Madame Steele and others, are devoting a great portion of their time and labour towards Oriental tales in some part of India or other, we have been leaving our rich store of mediæval literature to be eaten away by moth in some palm- leaf book tightly tied up and opened once a year, and that out of pure formality only, daring the day of worship of our goddess of learning—I mean the Sarasvatî pûjâ. After I began collecting the Folk-lore in Southern India, I am happy to see it announced in the Indian Antiquary that a countryman of ours has taken up that interesting subject in