THE WISE MAKE PROVERBS, AND FOOLS REPEAT THEM

"Just as beauty spots and hair beautify women, proverbs beautify language"

 --Wakil Ahmed

As a child, I always used to admire at the way my mother would flit from one proverb to the other. Naach na jaane anganwe tedh, bade miyan toh bade miyan , chhote miyan suhanallah, चलनी दूसे सूप के जेमें बहत्तर छेद , ना काम के ना काज के दुशमन अनाज के and gul khaye, gul gulle se parhez were amongst the most frequently used. Much more exposed to rural settings, her proverbs had the smell of the soil. As such, quite a few proverbs from my native Bihar were nothing if not colourful. So you have ones like "लंगटा पहिरी त का, आ बिछाई त का?" meaning  A bum has nothing to wear, what to say of a bed sheet.  Another one which went a bit scatological  was  गांड में गू नहीं नौ सूअर को नेवता or  no crap in the arse and invitations to nine pigs. 

"A proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation"(Mieder 1985:119). Products of cross pollination of cultures, proverbs flow across many countries and linguistic boundaries , have disputed antiquity and indeterminate authorship ( actually had it been so, they would have been called quotes!). Paremiological research suggests that a very large number of proverbs owe it to stories written on papyrus in ancient Egypt, the Vedas and the Upanishads, the Bible (including, but not limited to the Book of Proverbs) and to medieval Latin (aided by the work of Erasmus, who was "Made" in Gouda by a 15th century Dutch Renaissance humanist and his Maid). The oldest specimen of Bangla literature, the Charyapada, also contains  a few proverbs, e.g., আপনা মাসে হিরনা বাইরে  or apna mase harina bairi (the deer has enemies because of its flesh) used by Bhusuku. 

While many claim that proverbs of a culture mirror its values, others argue that they are reflections of broad human experience - for example, the Biblical "Sow as you reap" is reflected in various cultures , including many Indian as well - jaisi karni waisi bharni ( Hindi), jebu babo tedhu loon ( Gujarati), yeman karma teman phal ( Bangla), करावे तसे भरावे | kraave tase bhraave ( Marathi) . In her book The Cultural History of Bengali Proverbs,  Susdeshna Basak mentioned 21 sub categories of Bengali folk proverbs, ranging from those concerning deities and mythological characters to social life , flora and fauna, folk tales and even love. However, it could be difficult to accept that they reflect the values within a cultural boundary with unfailing consistency because in the same society one comes across pairs of proverbs which are run counter to each other. These are called counter proverbs - such as "Look before you leap" and "He who hesitates is lost" or even the more colourful one from Ghana "It is the patient person who will milk a barren cow" and "The person who would milk a barren cow must prepare for a kick on the forehead". 

Proverbs adopt several stylistic features like : Alliteration (forgive and forget);Parallelism (nothing ventured, nothing gained);Ellipsis (Once bitten, twice shy) or the Doodh ka jala chhachh phookh phookh kar peeta hai; Hyperbole (All is fair in love and war); Paradox (For there to be peace there must first be war) and Personification (Hunger is the best cook) and; Rhyme (when the cat is away, the mice will play.Interestingly, the rhyme exists even in its Bengali version as Bamun Gelo Ghar To Langal Tule Dhar or as the Brahmin who owns the land is away, the hired ploughmen stop working ( and inactivity, as you all know in Bengal, is the main activity practised with a vigour and industry that can put an ant to shame !). 

Proverbs are used for a variety of purposes - they have been the inspiration for titles of books: The Bigger They Come by Earl Stanley Gardner or as an opening of a story , such as "A stitch in time saves nine" or even at the end of a story, summing up a moral to the story, frequently found in Aesop's Fables, such as "Heaven helps those who help themselves" from Hercules and the Wagoner. From ancient times, people around the world have recorded proverbs in visual form either displayed, often in a decorative manner, on either pottery ( the three monkeys being very common), cross-stitches, murals, kangas (East African women's wraps),  wooden etchings and quilts. Proverbs are frequently used in advertising, often in slightly modified form - Ford once advertised its Thunderbird with, "One drive is worth a thousand words" and  D&D Dogs ran the "At D & D Dogs, you can teach an old dog new tricks".

Peppering one's talks with proverbs, especially humorous ones,  is a sign of a good orator, and very often, the weapon of wise men- the more  the merrier and better if humorous. . Top of the shelf on the humour quotient are the African ones with their anatomical and scatological obsession:  you have to be careful to kill a fly that is perched on your scrotum ( Ghana); it is okay for a child to play with the mother's breasts , but not with the father's testicles ( Guinea); however much the buttocks are in a hurry, they will always remain at the back and ; shit will smell, no matter how small ( Gambia) . In this Naya Zamana of re mixes, I also like a few of the Silicon anti- proverbs: Pentium wise , pen and paper foolish; the geek shall inherit the world ; too many clicks spoil the browse, etc. Then there are a few which are of recent construct: Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life; the severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach; prepositions are not words to end sentences with, etc. 

The darogas who trained me at places like Galsi, Bhatar, Durgapur and Bardhaman exposed me to a few Bengali proverbs- largely bending towards  my profession of a policeman.  A slew of them related to smooth talkers, dishonest people and thieves - ati bhakti chorer laksan (too much reverence is the mark of a cheat); চোরের মার বড় গলা/ chorer mar bada gala (the mother of a thief is the loudest in denunciation) , chor chor mastuto bhai, চোর না শোনে ধর্মের কাহিনী/chor na shone dharmer kahini (a rogue does not listen to a discourse on honesty). 

Generally, the most uncharitable proverbs have been reserved for women, especially mother in law, daughter in law and sister in law. দুই সিতেনর ঘর৴ খোদায় রক্ষা কর ( dui satiner ghar, khoday raksa kar or Only God can save the family of a man with co-wives);  and Nonoder o nonod hoey. "Dhiye gall mar, noon he mann mar or Say, my daughter. Listen, O daughter in law" is such a subtle but incisive Punjabi proverb related by a columnist friend of mine!  And then a host of them all over the world: The biggest trouble - a shrewish wife.(Yiddish Proverb); a beautiful woman is a beautiful trouble (Jamaican proverb); the more a woman admires her face the more she ruins her house.(Spanish Proverb). I remember coming across a line in David Mandelbaum's seminal work Society in India about women being behind family quarrels with the illustration of a Kannada proverb which was translated as " A thousand hairs can stay in a moustache, but not two pairs of tits in a blouse".

Actually, unvalued women's knowledge has spawned a whole genre called old wives' tales which are mostly Don'ts to scare away enterprising children like -masturbation will make you blind and have hairy palms; ice cream leads to nightmares; don't swallow gum or it will stay in your stomach for seven years ; chocolate leads to acne.

A sub category of proverb is called wellerism named after Sam Weller from Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers (1837). Wellerisms centre around a quotation which by a sleight of speech and craftiness, the speaker builds up a thick mist of humour, quite often, if not always, with a sexist slant: “Every evil is followed by some good,”  the man said when his wife died the day after he became bankrupt - about the most tongue in cheek thing to ever say on such an occasion. But then, men will be men!