recent times still) for any folklore connected with the separation of Church and State a year or two ago and the taking of the famous inventories-such as the weeping or sweating of statues, apparitions of saints, and all the various prodigies which ordinarily accompany events in which the clergy are interested; but nothing of the sort could be found. Popular imagination on the subject is dulled: more than one influence has doubtless affected it.

The volume closes with a very full index to the entire work. I have not found everything that I have looked for in it; but I can testify from personal experience to the difficulty of making an efficient index to a book of folklore. Though not flawless, however, it will be of great value to any one who desires to consult a book which must be indispensable to the student. The volumes are a monument of learning and research, guided by the experience and judgement of one who has himself contributed in no small degree to the goodly collections of French folklore. Those collections will still need to be consulted as the authority for most of the facts here collated. To Le Folk-Lore de France we must turn not merely as to a catalogue raisonné but also as containing M. Sébillot's ripe conclusions on many debatable questions, arrived at after thirty years of study given to the subject which owes so much to him. E. SIDNEY HARTLAND.

THE JATAKA, OR STORIES OF THE BUDDHA'S FORMER BIRTHS, translated from the Pali by various hands, under the editorship of PROF. E. B. Cowell. Vol. VI. Translated by PROF. COWELL and DR. W. H. D. ROUSE. Cambridge: the University Press, 1907.

ALL students of folk-lore will congratulate Dr. Rouse and his colleagues on the completion of this undertaking, the translation of the great Corpus of Buddhist folk-tales, known as the Jataka. The translation now finished is to be provided

H

with a final volume containing indexes, and, it may be hoped, an analysis of the tales and incidents. Now that the translation is in the hands of scholars, it remains for them to undertake the serious task of elucidating the immense store of materials provided for them. In some of the earlier volumes an attempt was made to supply parallels to the stories from the classical folk-lore of India and from modern collections. This it has been found impossible to provide in the later volumes, the notes to which are mainly philological. The true value of the Jataka will be to some extent obscured until it is brought into relation with the other collections of tales, such as the Panchatantra, Hitopadesa, Katha Koça, and Katha Sarit Sagara, with the epic, legal, and dramatic literature of India, and with the series of modern popular tales, of which large numbers have been collected and printed in recent years.

The present volume is perhaps not quite so interesting as some of its predecessors. It contains a vast amount of rather dreary didactic verse, through which Dr. Rouse has ploughed his way with admirable patience. At the same time there is naturally much of great value. Thus, in tale No. 539 we have a curious account of the Bodhisatta being chosen as king by a magic car which halts before him, and of the Swayamvara or selection of a bridegroom by a series of tests. In No. 543 there is a fine tale of the fascinations of a Naga sea-maiden, and No. 545 gives a second good Naga story. Snakes throughout play an important part, as in No. 540, where water drops from the bodies of the Kinnaras on a serpent, which in its wrath puffs out its breath and strikes them with blindness. No. 546 the Bodhisatta treads on the shadow of a hawk and causes it to drop a piece of meat; and in the same story there is a series of curious tests to try the devotion of a bride. In the same tale we have instances of gifted speaking birds; a curious account of an underground tunnel excavated to give access to a beleaguered city, and of the Battle of the Law, in which, when two kings meet, he that is induced to salute the other is hailed the victor.

In

The book, in its completed form, is the most important recent contribution to the study of Indian religion and folk

lore, and when its treasures are duly arranged and analysed it will be indispensable to all investigators of comparative popular legend.

W. CROOKE.

CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM, by the SISTER NEVEDITA (MARGARET E. NOBLE). London: Longmans, 1907.

THIS is a pleasant version of a selection of tales from the older Hindu literature, distributed into eight cycles-Snake Tales; the Story of Siva; Indian Wifehood, including the stories of Savitri and of Nala and Damayanti; Episodes from the Ramayana; Krishna; the Devotees; Tales of Great Kings; and, lastly, a cycle from the Mahabharata. For those who are unacquainted with the original authorities they furnish a useful introduction to the study of Hindu mythology, which may tempt the reader to study the vast body of sacred literature now for the most part available in English translations. Unfortunately English scholars have as yet done little to classify and popularize the Hindu traditional religious literature. Books like Moor's Hindu Pantheon, and Coleman's Hindu Mythology are now out of date; and Professor Dowson's Classical Dictionary is in many ways unsatisfactory. Bühler's Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde, which promised to fill the gap, is making slow progress. It is quite time that a combination of English scholars attempted to do for India what Preller-Robert, Farnell, and Miss Harrison have supplied for Greek mythology. In particular, there is a crying need for a book giving illustrations of Hindu cult-images, which the Indian Archaeological Survey could readily supply.

W. CROOKE.

FOLK TALES FROM TIBET, with Illustrations by a Tibetan Artist and some Verses from Tibetan Love-Songs. Collected and Translated by Capt. W. F. O'Connor. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1906.

THIS is a collection of twenty-two tales and a few verses, made during the British expedition to Tibet in 1903-4, by the Secretary and Interpreter of the Mission. Tales Nos. XV., XVII., and XX. have already appeared, but condensed and evidently in a form much less close to the original, in Mr. Perceval Landon's Lhasa (Appendix G). The last of these three tales is here told of a tortoise and monkey, whereas Landon tells it of a lizard and monkey. The latter version is probably the commoner, as several species of lizards are known and abundant in Tibet. In the present collection the tortoise is said to attempt to climb a coco-nut tree. In the Katilah-wa-Dimnah the tale is told of a tortoise and an ape.

Ten of the stories are beast-tales, and the list of animals referred to in the collection as a whole is interesting. The hare and tiger each bear parts in six stories, the hare (the woolly hare or Lepus oiostolus) taking the lead as a clever trickster, as might be expected in a country where it is the symbol of Buddha and the hare-in-the-moon replaces our manin-the-moon. Other animals named and, like the hare, native to Tibet, are the fox, mouse, goat, wolf, sheep, cat, duck, musk deer, kyang, crow, dog, frog, raven, sparrow, and spider. Foreign animals named are, in addition to the tiger, the elephant (of which, however, the Dalai Lama had a single specimen at Lhasa), lion, buffalo doe, tortoise, jackal, baboon, monkey, parrot, and peacock. Knowledge of these is probably derived from India, like the Tibetan Tales derived from Indian Sources translated from Schiefner's German by Ralston in 1882. It is somewhat surprising to find no reference to the most notable animals of Tibet, the yak and the shao or Tibetan stag. Of fabulous beasts, only the dragon and gryphon appear. The first tale, "How the Hare Got his Split Lip," is a "Just-So Story" of tricks played by the hare, who was so amused by the mischief wrought "that he leaned back on a handy stone, and laughed

to such an extent that he actually split his upper lip. And it has remained split to this very day." Hare-lip is common in Tibet, and many cases were treated by the surgeon to the Mission.

The features peculiarly Tibetan in the stories are less numerous than might have been expected, especially as Capt. O'Connor appears to have omitted many of the best-known stories as having been imported bodily from India or China, and also stories unsuitable for a popular book. It is to be hoped, however, that the latter stories will be made accessible to students, as he states that they are some of the very best and most characteristic. In "The Story of the Homebred Boy," the hero pretends by juggling with a pig's head to find a lost turquoise, after the failure of many famous sorcerers; the fifteenth day of the sixth month is named as very auspicious; a period of three years, three months, and three days is given for mourning; and water is sprinkled on a green cloth and a drum beaten to decoy out, by pretences of spring rains and thunders, spiders which have taken up their abode in a lady's head. In "The Story of the Two Neighbours" the envious neighbour imitates the action of his kind neighbour, and the magic grain brought to him by a sparrow sprouts and ripens, not, as he expects, into jewels, but into a truculent apparition with a bundle of papers who announces himself as a creditor in a former existence and seizes all the envious man's possessions. "The Story of the Foolish Young Mussulman" refers as a Tibetan custom to the bridegroom becoming a member of the bride's family, and to the turning yellow of the soles of the feet as a sure sign of imminent death. The same story has also an incident of the Alnaschar type. In the story of "The Country of the Mice" a multitude of grateful mice destroys the weapons and provisions, etc., of an invading army, and the Tibetan custom of presenting a silk scarf at a ceremonial visit is mentioned. Another story relates to the "country of Room," and Nepal is the scene of "The Story of the Mouse's Three Children," in

1 For other incidents in this story, cf. Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales (The Story of a Foolish Sachúli, and note thereon); Dracott, Simla Village Tales (Sheik Chilli); and Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir (All for a Pansa).