Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/188

180 little: the girls as long as they receive these are called "Bugchî, my Present." It is therefore useless to call an orphan "Bugchi."

37. Jatt fakîr gall gandiân dî mâlâ.

The Jatt fakîr carries a garland of onions, i. e., the child is father to the man. A man by changing his condition will not change his habits. Religious mendicants (fakîrs) will not eat onions, Jatts live on them,

38. Kuttâ râj bahâliye, te chakkî chattan jâh.

Set a dog on the throne and he still licks the handmill, i. e., a beggar on the throne is a beggar still. The chakkî is the handmill used by Panjabi women for grinding corn; dogs constantly come to lick it. Habits do not change.

39. Bânh jalî gîâ par bât nahîn gîâ.

Burn the rope and the twist of it remains, i. e., can the leopard change his spots?

Elliot, Races of the North-west Provinces of India, Beames's ed. 1869, vol. i. p. 261, in his article on Harbong kâ râj, quotes the above book as Roebuck's Oriental Proverbs. Its full title is " A Collection of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases in the Persian and Hindoostanee Languages," compiled and translated chiefly by the late Thomas Roebuck, Captain on the Madras Establishment, Public Examiner in the College of Fort William, and Member of the Asiatic Society. Calcutta, printed at the Hindoostanee Press, 1824.

Captain Roebuck died of fever in ]819, aged 35, in the midst of his useful career, and his book was published by the celebrated H. H. Wilson in 1824, and is dedicated to another pioneer of Indian studies, J. B. Gilchrist.

The collection of proverbs published by Wilson in Roebuck's name was commenced by Dr. William Hunter, the distinguished scholar, carried on and nearly completed by Roebuck, and finished and published by H. H. Wilson. The original plan was to publish a collection of Arabic and Persian, Sanskrit, Panjâbî, and Hindustani (Urdu) proverbs. Only the Persian and Hindustani were however completed and published.

The copy before me belongs to the Library of the Asiatic Society of