hearing of my own plan, Mr. Fryar abandoned this purpose, and very generously placed his valuable MS. at my disposal, from which I obtained several hundred new proverbs.
Shortly after this, again, one of my compositors brought me an old-looking MS. containing over fifteen hundred examples. A voiume printed in 1861 at Vepery, and containing nearly four thousand examples, was also put into my hands. But these collections yielded very few proverbs not already contained in my own MS. A Pundit of the Government Normal School furnished me with about a hundred fresh examples, and a small MS. belonging to a Native Christian lady of Tanjore contained a few curious proverbs that I had not seen before. These related to Christian character, and evidently originated in anything but a benign feeling.
Altogether my collections in 1872 exceeded fifteen thousand, but they only yielded the number contained in this volume. That the outcome of so large a gathering should be comparatively small may easily be accounted for by the fact that the several collections, in very many instances, contained the same proverbs. It must be borne in mind that my own collection, which eventually absorbed the others, was made during a period extending over forty years, and that, through the medium of the Dinavartamâni, I had received contributions from all parts of the Madras Presidency, as well from North Ceylon. Hence it was but natural that I should anticipate collectors who come into the field later.
But for the omission of many of the admired Aphorisms of the ancient Tamil matron, Avveyar, this collection would have been somewhat larger, Though these Aphorisms are compositions of
