Aranool - Book on morality

Preface At the request of my friend Swami Shuddhananda Bharati I am delighted to write a short preface to this little work. I had the privilege of seeing it previously in its shortened form and was then greatly struck with the way in which he had worked out the ethical principles of India for modern life. By adopting the Kural metre he has inevitably challenged comparison with the greatest work of Tamil literature.
This was a very bold thing to do, and while it is only natural that his verses should suiffer as a result of this comparison, yet it must be said that they are written in simple and chaste Tamil. Swamiji's book is meant not for the elect, but for the common people, and so he has not followed his great predecessor in wrapping up his thought in such concise language that it requires considerable practice to understand it.
Most of our author's stanzas are so simple that one with ans education at all can understand them. Like the author of the Kural he has dealt with practical life and its needs, and he has done so from the point of view of today rather than that of yesterday. The book will there-fore be found of real value from the ethical point of view. The modem conceptions of social service and national life fend their places in it.
He takes up such subjects as disease, manual labour as well as the regular subjects of other. ethical preachers. The author daims that it is a new gospel which came to him during, a special time of meditation when he sat silent communing with himself and God tor three months. We venture to think that in the development of Indian ethical thought this book will occupy a distinct place. The author is one, who not only thinks but who also acts and he has been foremost in the application of his ideas.
It is theretore with very great pleasure that I comnend this book to the Tamil public in the hope that it may help them botte to think more deeply and truly about ethical problems and to apply the highest ethical principles to their daily life. We would like to suggest to School Teachers and Inspectors that they will tend this book exceedingly useful as a moral text-book for Schools. H. A. Popley