Dr. De Jonghe's pamphlet of 74 pages considers the secret societies of the Lower Congo chiefly from the religious standpoint. He criticises the ideas of Schurtz and Frobenius as to the origin of secret societies and their close relations with puberty rites and the religious education given in the fetish schools, but his main object is to summarise the information available as regards the two principal societies of Lower Congo, the nkimba and the ndembo. The former appears to be a puberty institution, and is confined to males, although a feeble imitation of it exists in some places for the other sex. The ndembo admits both sexes and all ages, but the information available about it is very scanty. Rev. J. H. Weeks informed me that in the Wathen district the ndembo appeared to be very degenerate, there being no trace of any training given by it, and neophytes remaining in the ndembo bush as long as food was provided by their relatives. The entrants are supposed to die, and the food is explained as necessary to strengthen the nganga and his assistants to turn over the bodies and so prevent their decay. Dr. De Jonghe arranges his evidence under various heads, such as area and names of societies, age of initiation, selection of novices, length of tests, etc., and concludes that one object of the nkimba may be sexual separation at puberty (a view adopted by Dr. Webster as regards the puberty institution), while its main end is civil and religious training. The ndembo he regards as a magical society. His pamphlet ends with a small but valuable bibliography of 58 books and articles, with annotations as to the nature and source of each author's information. A. R. WRIGHT.

LEGEND IN JAPANESE ART. A description of historical episodes, legendary characters, folk-lore myths, religious symbolism illustrated in the arts of old Japan. By HENRI L. JOLY. Illustrated. John Lane, 1908.

So numerous have been the books on things Japanese during the last few years that it seems difficult to justify a fresh one. But M. Joly has found a comparatively little known region where his

offer of help as a guide will be hailed with enthusiasm by the student. Every collector of folklore objects, and every folklorist anxious to know the legends or symbolism embodied in the beautiful or grotesque Japanese netsuké, sword furniture, inro, prints, etc., which he meets, will often have had great difficulty in satisfying the curiosity aroused. Even Japanese acquaintances cannot explain the meaning of all the objects shown to them, and there is no "Smith's dictionary" of Japanese biography and mythology. If one can learn the name of a character or incident depicted, it may still require considerable labour to obtain further particulars, and objects evidently of high interest to the student of custom and religion have to be put in the cabinet unexplained. Anderson's valuable Descriptive Catalogue of a collection of Japanese and Chinese paintings in the British Museum was published in 1886, and Brockhaus's magnificent Netsuke is limited to those objects and is out of print.

M. Joly has amassed from Japanese books and friends, and from other collectors, etc., a great quantity of notes and illustrations relating to the legendary subjects of Japanese art, and gives the result, as a dictionary arranged alphabetically under names chiefly of historical persons and mythical beings, in this bulky quarto volume of 453 pages, with upwards of 700 beautifully clear illustrations and 16 colour reproductions. He has added a Japanese index under radicals, and a bibliography which is specially valuable for containing a large number of illustrated Japanese works with their native titles, translations of the same, and some annotations. The European portion of the bibliography is very far from complete, but does not profess to be more than a useful list for general reference. A number of the articles in the body of the work are very useful, e.g. on masks, giving an account of 138 forms, with 118 illustrations, a list of Japanese names, and a bibliography; on the sennins (but for some reason not obvious under the Indian term rishis instead of sennins); and a table showing the relations of the Japanese zodiacal signs and years and horary characters. The last might with advantage be explained in detail. Some other articles, which are perhaps less concerned with art, are very incomplete, such as those on charms and games. The latter article does not include in its

bibliography either Culin's Korean Games with notes on the corresponding games of China and Japan, or Falkener's Games Ancient and Oriental and How to Play them (in which there are accounts of Japanese chess games and Go). There are a few comparative notes on the folktales cited, several being taken from Dr. Lang's Custom and Myth, and these might well be omitted, or, if retained, should be made a real contribution to comparative storyology. Other comparative notes are not very valuable. For example, Mitsume, the three-eyed goblin, is compared with a description of the three-eyed, but otherwise quite different, Tibetan deity Palden Lhamo, cited from Perceval Landon's Lhasa (which is referred to as Percival Landon's Lhassa). M. Joly appears to rely greatly upon the works of Lafcadio Hearn, who is now, however, regarded as a somewhat doubtful authority. The opening chapter on "Emblems and attributes" contains a good deal of miscellaneous folklore under such headings as mirror (predicts future at 2 a.m.), nails (finger) (white spots for gifts), seals (must be affixed an odd number of times or the document is unlucky), star (shooting) (soul of person just dead), and string (hair string breaking foretells a death). The note on sneezing is "Sneezing, has ominous meanings: if once, the affected person is praised somewhere; if twice, reviled; if three times, it is a sure proof that he has 'Kaze wo Totta' (caught the wind), i.e., a 'cold.'" The three-times omen has a flavour about it rather of individual than of folk humour, and according to another authority the ordinary Japanese belief is that three sneezes indicate that someone is in love with the sneezer.

Having noted so many causes for gratitude, and added a word of praise for the wide range and beautiful reproduction of the illustrations, it is very regrettable to be obliged to accept M. Joly's invitation in his introduction to correct his pages, and to complain of the defects of haste and carelessness which render the book so much less of a treasure than it might have been. Το begin with, a petty annoyance is that the author has been badly served by his proof-reader. The edible seaweed kobu used in the New Year festival is referred to on p. xxiv. under a heading Alguae, as the ficus (not fucus) vesiculosus, and alguae for alga appears again on p. 188. Chariot appears thrice in four lines

xxvii. as charriot, and there are many other misspellings, such as pawlonnia, goblings, murdured, place (for palace), Toaist To t'aoist), Tibethan (for Tibetans), customs (for costumes), Amithaba (for Amitabha), etc. Such sentences as the following should not have evaded correction,-(p. 16) "Mikoshi Niudo, bald headed, pulls its tongue and lolling it about, looks over screens"; (p. 240) "his would-be murderer, who achieved him with his kotsuka"; (p. 88) "The Japanese top differs from the European one, but is very similar to the Sabot of the French boys"; (p. 107) "the Norse myth of the white swan, or sometimes seal, which married a fisherman and gave him three children before leaving him, finally, in Siberian and South African folklore"; (p. 331) "unfortunately for the peasants living on his estate, he was of fastuous disposition." A more serious defect is that the scrappiness and inaccuracy natural to notebook jottings has not been remedied by careful revision and checking. Even in the bibliography, besides such slips as Anectodes Japonaises and Folk-lore Records, 1878-9 (instead of FolkLore Record, 1878), such errors occur as Brinkley, Capt. China and Japan...10 vols.", instead of Japan and China, 12 vols. Citations, too, are not carefully made. For example, the tale of the monkey and the lizard cited from Landon's Lhasa ends thus on p. 237: "The lizard . . . was roundly reviled by the monkey, and flew away . . . but the story does not say whether he went home." If we turn to Landon's original story, we read: “So the Monkey knew that the Lizard was laying a trap for him, and he ran away jeering at the silly Lizard. So the Lizard returned to Mrs. Lizard in the lake"! Other citations appear to be equally impressionist in style; Saruta Hiko no Mikoto, a Shinto deity, is said to have a nasal appendage 7 cubits long, but the original Nihongi gives it as 7 hands long. In fact the whole book appears to require a thorough revision. The dictionary headings are often out of alphabetical order, and in a long list of cases do not correspond with the names given under the illustrations. would be a great improvement if the illustrations were numbered, and referred to by numbers in the articles. It is never certain at present that an article is not illustrated somewhere; Hattara Sonja on p. 114 is illustrated opposite p. 276, and Handaka

It

Sonja on p. 109 is illustrated opposite p. 278. Moreover, it is not certain whether every illustration is explained in the text; sometimes its subject does not appear in the dictionary,-e.g. Niunria Kosonsho, Kakudaitsu, Monju Bosatsu (Manjusri), etc.; or is dealt with under a different name,-e.g. Rokusonno in the plate opposite p. 374 is dealt with under Tsunemoto in the text, and the explanation of two illustrations of a deer and maple in the plate opposite p. 226 must be looked for under the Japanese name for the maple, momiji, on p. 233. In the article on the rakans or arhats, a list of 16 is given, and the reader is referred to the names of the separate worthies for their attributes; only 4 of the 16 names, however, appear in the dictionary. In short, all the references need checking, and in many places different bits of notebook information need to be harmonised. The above discrepancies are only a few of a long list noted in reading, which it would be wearisome to set out in full. Were not the book one necessary to the student, it would not have been worth while pointing out its numerous small errors. A new edition, cleared of the present disfiguring blemishes, would indeed be a joy and a worthy result of the labour expended.

A. R. WRIGHT.

Γαμήλια Σύμβολα. ὑπὸ Ν. Γ. Πολίτου. Athens :
Sakellarios, 1906.

IT is quite safe to recommend any book by Polites, who was one of the first Greek scholars, as he is one of the ablest, to direct attention to the survivals of ancient life in modern. This pamphlet discusses the marriage rites and symbols in the Christian church: the betrothal ring, the crowns, the loving cup, the circling dance, with suggestions as to their origin. A number of notes describe local peculiarities of custom.

W. H. D. R.