Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/419

 Reviews. 399

Thurston. Most of the Bulletins issued up to the present time have been devoted to the anthropology of Southern India. This is a most useful work, inasmuch as the anthropology of Southern India, though not less interesting and valuable from a scientific point of view than that of Northern and Central India, has received much less attention. The first number of vol. iii. is chiefly occupied by a careful series of notes, almost amounting to a monograph, by Mr. F. Fawcett, on the Nambutiris of Malabar. The Nambutiris are a special and exclusive caste of Brahmans, and Mr. Fawcett's inquiries lead to a more favourable view of their mental and physical character than has been generally entertained. He believes their religion to be not a degraded form of Brahmanism, " but rather an elevated form of the earlier Dravidian religion — a very different thing." Reference must be made to the pages of the Bulletin for such details (and they are by no means few) as Mr. Fawcett has been able to collect of their beliefs and cere- monies, and their relations with the Nair (or as he prefers to spell it, Nayar) women — the latter a subject first discussed by the late Mr. McLennan.

Mr. Thurston was himself the writer of most of the earlier numbers of the Bulletin. He is aiming high, and is to be con- gratulated on the success which has hitherto attended his efforts. The Bulletin ought to be appreciated by students. The numbers can be obtained in this country at a nominal price through any agent for the sale of the Madras Government publications.

E. Sidney Hartland.

The Welsh People. Chapters on their Origin, History, Laws, Language, Literature, and Characteristics, by John Rhys and D. Brynm6r-Jones. T. Fisher Unwin. 1900.

The present work makes no special appeal to British folklorists, but contains much that is of profound interest for them. The historical chapters, brief and somewhat disconnected as they are, give a more faithful and scholarly record of Welsh events than can be found elsewhere. The History of Welsh Land Tenure, chiefly due to Mr. F. Seebohm, will be found very useful by the student