7 - Collecting Burmese Proverbs

Summary

A book called Burmese Proverbs by Hla Pe was published some time in the early part of 1962. The publishers were John Murray. My talk is on the making of this book and some of the problems and difficulties encountered.

I propose to present my talk under five headings: 1) the circumstances that led me to the writing of the book; 2) the examination of the precise nature of the Burmese proverb; 3) collecting the proverbs; 4) the preparation of this collection; and 5) writing the introduction to these proverbs.

I met an editor from John Murray at Cambridge a few years ago when I was president of the Cambridge University Buddhist Association. He was a regular attendant at our monthly meetings. One day he suggested to me that I should compile a book of Burmese proverbs for the Wisdom of the East series. For many reasons I gave him a non-committal answer. Two years later he asked me to lunch with him in London and talked me into it. But he never saw the final draft of the book, because by the time I finished it he was working as a lecturer in the University of Hong Kong, and the responsibility of putting the book into shape had been taken over by another editor from John Murray.

The first requisite before I put my pen to paper was to ascertain the meaning of the Burmese word for proverb, which is sagabon. There are many words in my vocabulary which I have used in my conversations and writings without bothering to find out their significance, and sagabon was one of these. The evidence obtained from my investigation has convinced me that the word in question literally means “similar saying”. Burmese proverbs are essentially similes or parables. They are usually introduced in written or spoken language by the following words: “like”, “as” and “as it were”. Similar in meaning to the Arabic word mathal or the Malay upam-an, the Burmese word also embraces the ideas inherent in the Chinese word for proverb, yen, meaning “elegant or accomplished words”, and su-yii, “common sayings”, and in the Sanskrit word, subhāsita, “well spoken words”.