Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/246

 REVIEWS.

Census of India, 1901. General Report by H. H. Risley and E. A. Gait. Calcutta, 1903. 3 vols. Price i8s.

The report of the results of the Census of India for 1901 pre- pared by Messrs. Risley and Gait is a most important contribution to our knowledge of the religions and ethnography of the Empire. Mr. Risley, owing to his deputation on other duties, was unable to complete the report. His place was taken by Mr. Gait, who had recently compiled an excellent report on the Census of Bengal, and he, in spite of the obvious difficulties of the situation, has brought the work to a close in a most satisfactory way.

Perhaps the most valuable portion of the report is the admirable disquisition on the Indian dialects by Dr. G. A. Grierson, who has for some years been engaged on the Linguistic Survey. He works out in detail the interesting theory, originally formulated by Dr. Hoernle, that there were at least two Indo-Aryan invasions of India, one preceding the other, by tribes speaking different but closely connected languages. The later body of invaders entered the Panjab like a wedge, and forced their predecessors outwards in three directions — east, south, and west. The inner and later group thus includes the Western Hindi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Panjabi, and the Himalayan dialects, while the outer and earlier division is represented by languages like Kashmiri, Sindhi, Marathi, Oriya, and Assamese.

The chapters on Religion and Ethnography are, in the main, the work of Mr. Risley, and are, as might have been expected, interest- ing and suggestive. If any criticism of the method may be per- mitted, it may be said that the elaborate dissertations on the history and general principles of Animism and Fetishism are out of place in a report like this. AVhat wc want from the Indian observer is