Dictionary of Hindustani Proverbs (Romanised)

This book is a charming collection of over 12,500 proverbs, sayings, aphorisms, maxims, emblems and similes from the Northern Indian regions. It contains apart from the Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani and Punjabi sayings others from Marwari, Bhojpuri, Maggah and Trihuti languages. The author made his collection between 1870 and 1880 while his dictionary was being compiled and his object was mainly to illustrate by their laws the real life of the people, and also the methods by which they expressed their thoughts. His assistants numbered about a dozen, one of those above mentioned, worked on to the end with him. The comprehensive title of the work makes it clear that his intention was to cover both the dialects and the lore of Northern India as widely as he could. All the quotations in it belong to the author’s collection of proverbial phrases, etc. He has not added to them from outside sources. The form in which they are presented in the vernacular is also his, and so is the system of transliteration, being adapted to that used in his well-known New Hindustani Dictionary. The book is proved to be handy, who wants to use proverbs in speaking and writing. This book was first published in 1886.