2023-02-19 12:13:42 by ambuda-bot
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iv
FOREWORD
civilisation behind. If the reader but bring
a little capacity to reflect and learn, he will
find himself wiser and better when he closes
the volume than when he began it.
Those that have essayed literary tasks
will appreciate and enjoy a certain feature
of this enterprise. There is nothing in this
abridgment which is not Valmiki's. Large
portions of the original epic have been cut
out; but the articulation of the portions
that are retained is effected in the poet's own
words. No vestiges are visible of the
dismemberment, no transfusion from at
foreign organism, no prose links, no variation
from the anushtubh metre. The compiler,
Pandit A. M. Srinivasa Achariar, has neces-
sarily been driven to strange shifts. But
I have not seen his vandalism go lower down
than quarters of slokas. Perhaps there is
not even one case of four several quarters
being lifted from four several verses and
fitted together to form a new one. But
every now and then I have marvelled to
observe how a quarter has been grafted
from one context to another context far
removed but with every appearance of having
FOREWORD
civilisation behind. If the reader but bring
a little capacity to reflect and learn, he will
find himself wiser and better when he closes
the volume than when he began it.
Those that have essayed literary tasks
will appreciate and enjoy a certain feature
of this enterprise. There is nothing in this
abridgment which is not Valmiki's. Large
portions of the original epic have been cut
out; but the articulation of the portions
that are retained is effected in the poet's own
words. No vestiges are visible of the
dismemberment, no transfusion from at
foreign organism, no prose links, no variation
from the anushtubh metre. The compiler,
Pandit A. M. Srinivasa Achariar, has neces-
sarily been driven to strange shifts. But
I have not seen his vandalism go lower down
than quarters of slokas. Perhaps there is
not even one case of four several quarters
being lifted from four several verses and
fitted together to form a new one. But
every now and then I have marvelled to
observe how a quarter has been grafted
from one context to another context far
removed but with every appearance of having