FOREWORD.
In presenting this rendering of the popular oriental tale of ' Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,' into the Sanskrit language, to the student-world, and to the reading public, Mr. Modak has given evidence of his mastery over the classical language of India and has vindicated the claim of Sanskrit as an instrument of expressing in an incisive manner the most modern as well as the most ancient ideas. In true oriental style, he has supplied the usual framework of the story — the fiction of a master inculcating a moral lesson upon his disciples by means of a story. Another excellent feature — entirely an innovation of the author — is the introduction in proper places of epigrams and pithy sayings in verse-form which give to the translation the appearance of an original work modelled on the pattern of the Hitopadesa or the Pancatantra. The Sanskrit language is unequalled in its power of concise metrical argument, and in its precision and adequacy as an instrument of expression. A lover of Sanskrit, therefore, will be delighted to read these pages which will not fail to give him the impression that he is not reading a translation at all, but an original tale in Sanskrit. If the translator creates this impression, he has truly succeeded ; otherwise he will deserve Shelley's strictures on the headlong rashness of translation — " It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed or it will bear no flower. " This excellent remark lays, down the very end and purpose of a translation.
