Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/304

 268 Reviews.

activities of the social body." Their ends are severely practical and material, and are the business not of the individual but of the community, which is represented by the KhuUakpa, or hereditary village officer. The Maiba, half doctor and half magician, is a separate and non-hereditary official, while the head of the household acts as priest in all purely domestic worship.

The most interesting institution, in part social and in part religious, is the genua or periodical taboo, of which Mr. Hodson gives a valuable account much too intricate to allow of a summary. From his explanations and the facts collected in other volumes of this series we now possess ample material for examining an institution which, so far as I am aware, has no exact parallel in any other part of India.

Mr. Hodson's book is the result of a careful summary of the literature and his own personal researches. It well maintains the standard set by the other volumes in this excellent series of ethno- graphical handbooks for which we are indebted to the Government of Eastern Bengal.

W. Crooke.

The Glory of the Shia World. The Tale of a Pilgrimage. Trans, and edit, from a Persian Manuscript by Major P. M. Sykes, assisted by Khan Bahadur Ahmad Din Khan. Macmillan, 19 lo. 8vo, pp. xiv -1-279. 4 ^o'- ^"^ 75 other ill.

This volume purports to be the life-history of a young Persian ot Kerman up to the crowning of his ambition by a pilgrimage to the sacred shrine of Imam Riza, at Meshed, the Glory of the Shia World. We are not concerned here with the form in which Major Sykes has preferred to throw his narrative, nor with the unpleasant stories of cruelty and corruption, which the soi-disant native of the country relates so naively. The descriptions of a Persian entertainment, of shooting, and of warlike affairs are very interesting to all readers, and a terrible account of a tragedy in a quicksand is most moving. There is, however, a good deal in this volume which will appeal more particularly to the members