REVIEWS.

FROM CARPATHIAN TO PINDUS: PICTURES OF ROUMANIAN COUNTRY Life. By TAREZA STRATILESCO. With 2 Maps and 63 Illustrations. Fisher Unwin. 15s. net.

WE are not able from first hand knowledge to pronounce on the truth of this picture of Roumanian life, but there is no doubt as to its interest. There is an introduction of 43 pp. in which the history of Roumania is briefly sketched, with illustrative extracts from its ballads. If the authoress takes a more rosy view of the character and importance of the people than some might do, who shall blame her? She speaks from the heart. The succeeding chapters take the Peasant in various aspects: Peasant and Soil, Peasant in the Social Scale, and as related to the State, Religion, Home and Work, Social Life, Pastimes and Foreigners. Wherever possible, the statements of the text are illustrated by ballads, in the original Roumanian and in translation. These ballads are very characteristic: their point of view is their own, their imagery drawn from the surrounding country. The peasant hates the large landowners, and he hates the Greek, the Russian, the Tartarall the many peoples that have oppressed him in the past. But he is always a poet: all his feelings are expressed in verse, even those of the conscript in barracks. The tale is also interspersed with proverbs and anecdotes.

Some very curious and primitive myths are given (for example, the cosmic myth on p. 170): biblical legends are mixed up with

result. Unfortunately, these legends are only given in brief or by way of allusion. Rain-making charms and other such are given more fully. There are a few classical survivals, such as the Russalii (Lat. Rosalia). The names of the months are taken from the peasant's occupations or the earth's changes: January is Gerar, frost; February, Faur (faber); April, Florar, the flowerbringer; June is Ciresar, the cherry month, and so forth. Details are given of Wedding Customs and other parts of social life. The whole book is written in a lively and romantic style, which makes it very good reading.

W. H. D. ROUSE.

AUSGEWÄHLTE ERZÄHLUNGEN AUS HEMACHANDRAS PARISISHTAPARVAN. Deutsch mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen von JOHANNES HERTEL. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Heims, 1908.

THE present volume is intended to be the first of a series of collections of tales to be translated from various Eastern languages, with introductions and notes and indexes. The governing idea of the series seems to be "that nothing is better calculated to give an insight into the thoughts and feelings of foreign nations than their stories."

Dr. Hertel, who has done so much for the cause of Indian folk-lore by his investigations into the various recensions of the Panchatantra, has now turned his attention to the Parisishṭaparvan of the famous Jain teacher, Hemachandra, who flourished during the reigns of Jayachandra and his successor Kumārapāla, kings of Gujarat. He was born in December, 1088 A.D., and died in 1173 A.D. The poem of Hemachandra, from which Dr. Hertel has translated these extracts, is also known by the name of Sthaviravalicharita, and contains, to borrow the words of Professor Jacobi, who has edited the Sanskrit text of it, the history of the sixty-three "great personages, divine or human, who, according to the belief of the Jains, have, in the present order of things,

course." In order to facilitate comparison with the Sanskrit original, Dr. Hertel has given at the head of each page the number of the canto in Roman numerals, and noted in the margin the distichs in Arabic figures. This work, though, undoubtedly, grains of historical truth are embedded in it, may be looked upon, on the whole, as a collection of pious legends told for the edification of the Jain church. Like the Kathā Kośa, and other collections of the kind, it contains many tales well known in Europe. The literary references in Appendix I., which will be found at the end of Dr. Hertel's book, puts it into the power of any reader, who takes an interest in this branch of folk-lore, to trace the migration of these stories through the various countries of the world.

The best known of the tales contained in this volume is, perhaps, the apologue of the "Man in the Pit," which figures as No. 168 in Swan's Gesta Romanorum under the title "Of Eternal Condemnation," and has been versified by Archbishop Trench. According to Professor Ernst Kuhn, the oldest source of this tale is the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahābhārata, but the form into which it has been cast by Hemachandra for the edification of the Jain community is, perhaps, no less interesting. It runs as follows:

"A man, who was travelling from country to country with his caravan, came once on a time into a wood infested by bandits. The robbers made an attack on the caravan to plunder it, and the members of it ran away. The man, deserted by his caravan, fled into the depths of the forest. Then a wild elephant suddenly made a rush towards the fugitive, who in his terror came at last upon a pit, the sides of which were overgrown with grass, just as the elephant was on the point of overtaking him. He flung himself into it, thinking that so he might possibly save his life.

"Now there stood on the edge of this pit a banyan-tree, and one of its air-roots hung down into the middle of the pit. This root the man caught in his fall, and clung to it. The elephant stretched his trunk down into the pit, and touched therewith the man's head; however, he did not succeed in seizing him. Then

bottom of the pit an enormous serpent, which opened its cavernous jaws, making ready to swallow him as soon as he fell down. On the four walls of the pit he beheld four snakes, which were trying to bite him. In the meanwhile two mice, one white, the other black, were gnawing at the pendent root, so that he could distinctly hear the nibbling of their teeth. And as the elephant could not reach the man, he struck with his trunk the bough, from which the root hung down, as if he would tear up the banyan-tree.

"While the elephant was shaking the bough with its trunk, bees flew out from it, and stung the man all over. But from the supply of honey in the banyan-tree drops fell on him from time to time, and rolled down his forehead into his mouth, and he relished their sweetness, and thought that an exquisite enjoyment had fallen to his lot."

The Jain teacher goes on to point the moral of the apologue. The man is a being in this transmigratory existence represented by a forest. The elephant is death; the pit is birth as a man; the gigantic serpent is hell; the other snakes are anger, pride, deceit, and greed. The banyan-tree is human life; the white and dark mice denote the light and dark fortnights which eat it away. The bees are diseases; the drops of honey are the pleasures of sense. "What wise men could take delight in them?"

Professor Ernst Kuhn is of opinion that this parable, "which has edified Brahmans, Jains, Muhammadans, Christians, and Jews," filtered into Western literature through the translations of "Kalilah and Dimnah," and of "Barlaam and Joasaph." His view, that its original home is India, will, I think, meet with universal acceptance.

The account given in this poem (Canto VI.) of the founding of Pataliputra differs slightly from that found in other works. According to this form of the legend, Pațaliputra was so named from a Patali tree (Bignonia Suaveolens), which was covered with a mass of red flowers, and displayed such an expanse of shade, that "it looked like the umbrella of the earth." On this tree was seated a blue jay into whose beak insects flew of their own accord. An astrologer, more knowing than his fellows, was

course." In order to facilitate comparison with the Sanskrit original, Dr. Hertel has given at the head of each page the number of the canto in Roman numerals, and noted in the margin the distichs in Arabic figures. This work, though, undoubtedly, grains of historical truth are embedded in it, may be looked upon, on the whole, as a collection of pious legends told for the edification of the Jain church. Like the Kathā Kośa, and other collections of the kind, it contains many tales well known in Europe. The literary references in Appendix I., which will be found at the end of Dr. Hertel's book, puts it into the power of any reader, who takes an interest in this branch of folk-lore, to trace the migration of these stories through the various countries of the world.

The best known of the tales contained in this volume is, perhaps, the apologue of the "Man in the Pit," which figures as No. 168 in Swan's Gesta Romanorum under the title "Of Eternal Condemnation," and has been versified by Archbishop Trench. According to Professor Ernst Kuhn, the oldest source of this tale is the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but the form into which it has been cast by Hemachandra for the edification of the Jain community is, perhaps, no less interesting. It runs as follows:

"A man, who was travelling from country to country with his caravan, came once on a time into a wood infested by bandits. The robbers made an attack on the caravan to plunder it, and the members of it ran away. The man, deserted by his caravan, fled into the depths of the forest. Then a wild elephant suddenly made a rush towards the fugitive, who in his terror came at last upon a pit, the sides of which were overgrown with grass, just as the elephant was on the point of overtaking him. He flung himself into it, thinking that so he might possibly save

his life.

"Now there stood on the edge of this pit a banyan-tree, and one of its air-roots hung down into the middle of the pit. This root the man caught in his fall, and clung to it. The elephant stretched his trunk down into the pit, and touched therewith the man's head; however, he did not succeed in seizing him. Then