Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/392

356 torical," "Economic," and "Administrative," the first of which now lies before us. It contains sections on the Physical Aspects, the Geology, Meteorology, Botany, Zoology, Ethnology and Caste, Languages, Religions, Population, and Vital Statistics of the vast peninsula, each section by an acknowledged master of the subject. Only two of them come within the purview of Folklore: that on Religions, a clear and excellent summary, both historical and descriptive, by our staunch supporter Mr. Crooke; and that on Ethnology, abridged from the chapter on "Tribe, Caste, and Race," by Mr. H. H. Risley, in the Report on the Census of India, 1901. The author, after enumerating the main features of the principal races, physical types, tribes, and castes, discusses the theories of the Origin of Caste put forth by Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Mr. Nesfield, and Monsieur Senart respectively; and while categorically asserting that "the origin of caste is from the nature of the case an insoluble problem," himself advances the hypothesis that it is to be found in the pride of birth which induced conquering races to hold themselves jealously aloof from the conquered. Necessity yet compelled the incomers to take wives from the lower races, thereby producing endless cross-divisions, and a reactionary intensified pride of exclusiveness, bolstered up by fictitious traditions, led to a redoubled aloofness in later generations. This "conjecture," says the author, "is based—firstly, upon the correspondence that can be traced between certain caste-gradations and the variations of the physical type; secondly, on the development of mixed races from stocks of a different colour; and thirdly, on the influence of fiction."

interesting little pamphlet gives an account of the customs and beliefs of a population of German descent in the State of Pennsylvania, and so deals with the lore of an immigrant folk settled under an alien government and in the midst of a people