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been used with advantage. Lastly, a protest may be allowed on the format of the book. When a hard-worked official, with little or no extra remuneration for work of this kind, devotes to it his scanty leisure, the least he may reasonably expect is that his book shall appear in a respectable lorni, and not with the inferior paper and second-rate printing which the Government has pro- vided in the present case. In this age of cheap reproductions of photographs a series of illustrations of typical castes and tribes would have made it much more valuable to readers unfamiliar

with the Indian peoples.

W. Crooke.

The Cochin Tribes and Castes. Vol. I. By L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer. Madras: Higginbotham & Co., 1909. 8vo, pp. XXX -1- 366. 111.

Ushered into the world as this book is under the auspices of Dr. Beddoe, who writes a preHice, and of Dr. Keane, who writes an introduction, anything of the nature of criticism of its contents is surely audacious. But audacious we must be, for we cannot accept and assimilate it every word, assured of its scrupulous accuracy in the region of fact, and we must face the risks. The author, quaintly spoken of by Dr. Beddoe and also by Dr. Keane as " Mr, Iyer," — which, by the way, is a designa- tion and not a name at all,^ — treats separately of the Katars, — called by him Kadars, — inhabiting the dense forest and the outskirts of the hills forming part of the Western Ghats which lie within the Cochin State, as well as of peoples of the lower castes of the plains, — some at length, as in the case of the Izhuvans to whom 65 pages are devoted, and some briefly. Photographs of all are supplied, and from these it is easy to believe that with few exceptions the peoples here described are allied in blood to each other and scarcely, if at all, distinguishable from the ordinary Madras Malas, or Pariahs, who are genuine Dravidians. Dr. Keane thinks they reveal

^ " Iyer " is merely an affix to a name signifying the particular sub-sect of the Tamil Brahmans to which a man belongs.