§ 128 .] 
tul’si das. 
49 
a comparison of himself to a dwarf, and of his powers over language 
to a skiff on the boundless ocean; but from under this modest state¬ 
ment there gleams a consciousness of his own superiority. His modesty 
is evidently a mock one, and the poet is really saying to himself all the 
time, ‘ I shall soon show my readers how learned I am, and what a 
command I have over all the nine rasas/ But (and this is another 
reason for his superiority) Tul’si never wrote a line in which he did 
not himself believe heart and soul. He was full of his theme, the 
glory and love of his master ; and so immeasurably above him did 
that glory and that love seem, that he was full of humility with regard 
to himself. As he expresses it:—‘ My intellect is beggarly, while my 
ambition is imperial. May good people all pardon my presumption 
and listen to my childish babbling, as a father and mother delight to 
hear the lisping prattle of their little one/ Kalidasa took Bam as a 
peg on which to hang his graceful verses; but Tul’si Das wove wreaths 
of imperishable fragrance, and humbly laid them at the feet of the god 
whom he adored. 1 One other point I would urge, which has, I believe, 
escaped the notice of even Native students of our author. He is, perhaps, 
the only great Indian poet who took his similes direct from the book 
of Nature and not from his predecessors. He was so close an observer 
of concrete things, that many of his truest and simplest passages are 
unintelligible to his commentators, who were nothing but learned 
men, and who went through the beautiful world around them with 
eyes blinded by their books. Shakespeare, we know, spoke of the white 
reflection of the willow leaves in the water, and thus puzzled all his 
editors, who said in their wisdom that willow leaves were green. It 
was, I think, Charles Lamb who thought of going to the river and 
seeing if Shakespeare was right, and who thereby swept away a cloud 
of proposed emendations. 2 So, too, it has been reserved for Mr. Growse 
to point out that Tul’sl Das knew far more about Nature than his 
commentators do. 
It remains now to point out the necessity there is of printing a 
correct text of this poet’s works. At present the printed bazar editions 
1 Babu Jawahir Mall, of Daud’nagar, in the district of Gaya, informs me 
that he knew an old man whose ancestor knew the poet, and that Tul’si Das 
told the ancestor that he had never written a line of poetry into which either 
the letter K r or the letter m (the first and last letters of the word Bam) 
did not come. This (if found to he true) is a valuable test for deciding whether 
doubtful passages are genuine or not. 
* The under surface, and therefore the reflection, of the willow-leaf is while. 
D 
