Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/292

270 have been seen flitting round the polo ground at the previous match played two days before" (vol. i., p. 36), and that their appearance foreboded deaths and violent events. The defeated side in the same game has to dance for the amusement of the victors, and shortly afterwards he sees a Kafir dance in which small axes are whirled. He is visited by a Mongol who will not face the camera (vol. i., p. 468), and his followers are disturbed at night by the sound of dragons (vol. ii., p. 321), and believe in "'old towns' buried by the sands, and full of hidden treasure," guarded by demons and not to be found a second time, (a legend referred to by the traveller Hsuan-tsang in the seventh century). His Chinese secretary, when bringing to An-hsi the corpse of a companion who has died on a journey, burns "a well-penned prayer to the dead man's spirit, asking him to preserve the corpse in fair condition for a week [till a coffin can be got] and to prevent a breakdown of their cart" (vol. ii., pp. 340-1). One record left by a Tibetan garrison of a thousand years ago specifies a medicine of "boiled sheep's dung mixed with butter, barley-flour, and other savoury ingredients." Such chance items whet the appetite for a more connected account of Central Asian folklore.

For physical anthropologists Sir Marc supplies many valuable photographs ranging from the Chitrali representatives of the Homo Alpinus to the western Chinese, and has made numerous records which will see the light later. It is noteworthy that, even under the elaborate Chinese civilisation of the third century, fire was still made by churning or rotating wooden pegs in blocks. Around the towers of the ancient frontier wall near Tun-huang were found tallies, gambling or divination cubes, and broken earthenware mended by string and leather thongs laced through holes, mixed with records dated in the first century; and elsewhere domestic furniture and appliances of early periods were unearthed. From the cave-temple hoard already mentioned came ancient damasks with Western patterns, probably prepared specially for export like the "Old Japan Ware" treasured at Dresden (vol. ii., pp. 209-10).

In conclusion, one is glad to find that in transliterating non-Chinese names the diacritical marks which are so irritating and useless to non-expert readers have been omitted. The volumes