Page:The Kural or The Maxims Of Tiruvalluvar.pdf/19

 rised English version of the Bible is the proper model to be followed by the translator of the Kural. The resemblance of the thought and diction of Tiruvalluvar to the great masterpieces of the Bible, and especially to the Ecclesiasticus, the Proverbs and Wisdom of Solomon, and the Sermons of Jesus, struck me forcibly, and I thought that if any portion of the vigour of the Kural could be preserved in English, it could only be by adopting the phraseology and the turns of expression of the English version of the Hebrew and Greek Vêda. The style of the English Bible lends itself, as everybody has felt, to the expression of every variety of thought, from the plain and the naive to the most sublime and dignified that the human mind can conceive. It would have been easy for Drew as well as Pope, who were members of the Christian Church, to have adopted such a style for the translation of Tiruvalluvar. But, as it is, Drew has given but a feeble translation, while Dr Pope's verses do not at all do justice to the merits of the original but on the contrary deform its grand thoughts by giving them a stilted and unnatural expression. The follow- Rh