Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/423

 Reviews. 403

Das Blut im Glauben und Aberglauben der Menschheit.

MiT BESONDERER BeRUCKSICHTIGUNG DER " VOLKSMEDI- ZIN " UND DES " JiJDISCHEN BLUTRITUS." HERMANN L.

Strack. Fiinfte bis Siebente Auflage. Neubearbeitung der Schrift " Der Blutaberglaube." Miinchen, Beck, 1900.

In this country we are happily free from that curse of several of the European nations, Anti-Semitism, in which an ancient super- stition has been taken up and exploited for sectarian and political ends. Hence that controversy has but feeble interest for us. Professor Strack's book, however, is much more than a contro- versial pamphlet. His inquiries have led him to consider the whole question of the superstitions relating to the ritual, medical, and magical, use of blood. The first edition was published in 1 89 1, and it has now been revised and partially rewritten for the second time. Additional citations have been inserted, and para- graphs of merely passing interest omitted ; the bibliography has been greatly extended, and an index added. As far as rabbinical, mediaeval, theological, and modern German literatures are con- cerned, it is now a most valuable collection of texts and references. But it is needless to review a work which has long since attained standard rank among students of superstition, and which as a refutation of the abominable slanders against the Jews has proved unanswerable.

E. Sidney Hartland.

Dialogues of The Buddha : Translated from the Pali by T. W. Rhys Davids : (Sacred Books of the Buddhists, translated by various Oriental scholars, and edited by F. Max Miiller, Vol. H.). Frowde, 1899.

This forms the second instalment of the valuable collection of translations of the Sacred Books of the Buddhists, forming a sup- plement to the great Oxford series of Sacred Books which we owe to Professor Max Miiller, and published with the aid of a subsidy from the King of Siam. The collection began with the 6^ataka- mala, or Garland of Birth-Stories, which has already been reviewed in these pages {Folk-Lore, vii., 192 seqq).|^^^ The present volume 2 D 2