14
மறைமலையம் -16
common ideal of brotherhood, for attaining which they should all be taught to strive hard. For, a public service not directed towards educating the people and unifying them, but directed simply to- wards creating a mere momentary stir will produce in the end not only no good but may even disturb the peace of the country. Hence, all serious, considerate and unselfish well-wishers of the Hindu as well as of the other communities of India should set to work to uplift the people, first by means of imparting a reformed education of their own mother tongue and secondly, by making them cohere into three or more strong and solid bodies as the Hindu, the Muhammedan, the Christian, and so on, in accordance with their time-honoured religious traditions. If these two were accomplished, all other reforms will, as a matter of course, closely follow in their wake.
Now, as regards this second edition, I wish to say a few words more. In order to make the study of this book much easier for students preparing for university examinations, I have added copious explanatory notes on words, phrases and subject-matter and have written also accounts of Joseph Addison's life and my own early life so far as the beginning of some essays. Not only to University students but also to all lovers of Tamil who study them for light and aesthetic enjoyment, these notes, I believe, will be of great use. The translation was, from the first, made very faithful to the original but in this edition it was made still more so in a few places where handled it somewhat freely in the previous edition. This was done with double purpose: at first, to show the futility of the complaint put in by brahmins and many misled students that Tamil has no sufficient quantity of words adequately to express the meanings of English words used in dealing with a variety of high class subjects and secondly, to bring home to their mind the fact that Tamil is an independent language with a rich store of words capable of expressing in a skilful hand all kinds of thoughts that appear in the different branches of learning. Instead of arguing about this fact with prejudiced persons, is it not better to show the fact itself in practice? Accordingly the Tamil style of this edition of essays has been rendered extremely pure by eliminating completely
