Indian Antiquary Vol 05

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 80

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[FEBRUARY, 1876.
What is our secret when 'tis told ?
A loved one, and nought else beside ; .
A lover who himself doth hide The loved one he would fain behold.
About us all His sunbeams play: On right, on left, below, above,
We revel in the light of love, Nor yet reflect a single ray. For though the soul of man they call
A mirror that reflected grace;
A mirror with a dusty face Reflecteth not the light at all.'
- British Quarterly Review.
The loved one lives for evermore, The lover dies a living death;
Till quickened by the loved one'e breath The lover cannot upward soar.
BOOK NOTICE THE LAND OF THE TAMULIANS AND ITS MISSIONS, by the lians are to be found in Burma, Pegu, Singapur,
Rev. E. R. Baierlein. Translated from the German by J. D. B. Gribble, F.R.A.S., M.A.I., M.C.S. (Madras :
and in the islands of Mauritius, Bourbon, and even Higginbotham & Co., 1875.)
in the West Indies .... In short, wherever there "A portion of this book," the translator tells is a lazier and more superstitious people to us," has already appeared in a German mission- be shoved aside, there will Tamulians be found, for ary publication. A considerable portion is here they are the most enterprising and movable translated from the original manuscript, and the people in India. Their numbers, according to the whole has been subjected to the revision of the last census, amount to sixteen millions." This author." The result is a book that deserves a wide characteristic has been remarked before in other circulation, and will be read by many with great branches of the Dravidian race, and if once the interest. We cannot say much for the printing, scattered fragments of that race were brought into and the proofs have not been read with over-much fall participation of the advantages of our educacare, but the book is written in a very clear, sim- tion and civilization, they will probably, to a large ple, and often fascinating style, and never wearies extent, supplant the more orthodox Brahmanical the reader by too minute details, or by dwelling races in offices requiring enterprise and energy. long on one subject: indeed some of the chapters There is a short notice of Tiruvalluvar,t the would well bear enlargement; what is given whets author of the Kural, from which we give the followthe appetite for more.
ing anecdote of his most dutiful wife :--"This The book is in two parts. In the first we have same good wife as she lay dying begged her stern the Land and its products; the People, their his- husband to explain what to her was a matter of tory and literature, Manners, Customs, and great mystery, and had puzzled her since the day Domestic Life; the Ethnology and Religion, the of her marriage : My lord, when for the first Temples and Temple-worship,-all treated of brief- time I cooked your rice and placed it before you, ly, but in an interesting and instructive way. you ordered me always to put a jug of water and In the second, we have short accounts of the a needle by your side; why did you order me to various Missions of the Ancient Church, the do this P' Whereupon her loving consort replied: Romish, Lutheran, English Episcopal, and Noncon. 'If, my dear one, a grain of rice should fall to the formist Churches,-that of the Lutheran Mission, ground, the needle is to pick it up with, and the to which the author belongs, naturally occupying water to wash it.' Then the wife knew that her the largest space, as does the account of Rhenius husband had never dropped a grain of the rice she and his work in the shorter chapter on the English had cooked for him, and died happy. Church Mission.
"Deeply moved, Tiruvalluvar sang :-O loving We shall make a few extracts: Here is the one, sweeter to me than daily rice! Wife, who author's estimate of the Tamil race:-"The most failed not in a single word! Woman, who gently important of the Dravidian races is that of the stroking my feet lay down after me to sleep and Tamulians. They occupy not only the [Tamil] arose before me! And dost thou leave me? How country ... but also the north of Ceylon and shall I ever again be able to close my eyes at the south of Travankor on the western side of
night " the Ghâts. There is a Christian congregation of There are some interesting translations from the Tamulians at Bombay and at Calcutta; and Tamu- early Tamil poets also, but we can only find space
"It is remarkable how the Tamil language has gradually instances are to be found of any foreign language, such a spread, with the spread of railways and roads. Take, for Telugu, &c., spreading in Tamil land. Telugu shoves instance, the district of Kad&pa. Seventy years ago Cana- Canarese on one side, and in its turn is displaced by Tamil. rese was the predominant language; now it is Telugu; but A hundred years hence the whole of the Madras Presidency since the railway was opened, seven years ago, Tamil is will be a Tamil-speaking country." spoken by many thousands near the line of rail. But rare t Conf. Ind. Ant. vol. I. p. 200.