This stanza is disregarded in the Burmese anthology, most probably on account of the difficulty of its adaptation to Buddhistic views. The Sanskrit Lokanîti originally contained 109 gâdhâs, which, in the Burmese version, have been expanded to 167.
The Lokanîti and Dhammanîti embrace a miscellaneous collection of subjects, and serve as suitable handbooks for the general reader for the study of prudential rules and principles of morality. The former is taught in almost every monastic school in Burma, and printed editions of it have helped considerably to extend its popularity. That a work of the kind should have charms for the Buddhist is not to be wondered at. He firmly believes that his future happiness depends upon his behaviour in his present life, and relies more on practical deeds rather than on the faith which his religion demands; and nothing could be more suitable to his wants than a kind of literature which lays down for him in pithy stanzas, and often in metaphoric language, a number of simply-worded apophthegms which are to shape his career in this world and fit him for a better sphere of existence when he leaves it.
The Râjanîti is an anthology originally compiled for the use of kings and princes, and based chiefly on the ancient Dharmaśâstras, of which Manu's code has evidently supplied the greater proportion of the stanzas. It must not be confounded with the Râjanîti of Lallu Lâla, which is nothing more than an adaptation in the Braj dialect of the Sanskrit Hitopadeśa. The Burmese Nîti seems to have for its prototype the Râjanîtiśâstra of C'âṇakya. The Dhammanîti, although the best and most comprehensive of the Nîtis, is very little studied—a circumstance that can he explained by its being more extensive in its scope than the Lokanîti, and therefore proving a task of greater labour to the copyist, through whom chiefly the wide circulation of texts could have been carried on in the absence of printing-presses. The Lokanîti, besides, had
