Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/432

 400 Rcvicivs.

Again, in the interpretation of omens everywhere there is a tendency to elaboration. The circumstances under which they occur must all be taken into due account. It is largely through this proviso that the intricacy of the sciences is achieved. The Indian lays down rules for the date of fulfilment corresponding to the period of the night in which the dream is seen. A dream in the first night watch is fulfilled in a year ; a dream in the second night watch in six months, and so on. The Greek, on the other hand, is more insistent than the Indian on the difference of interpretation depending on the person, sex, and standing of the dreamer; his interpretations are regulated for the rich man, the poor man, the woman, the slave, etc.

There are, of course, any number of points of interest, of similarities and differences, to be quarried from this in itself somewhat wearisome document. To quote a case where the parallel almost certainly has no historical association, the telling of an evil dream to the Sun, is also sound classical doctrine. Dr. von Negelein has earned the gratitude of all students of divina- tion by making accessible to them this authentic body of Indian tradition in a form prepared for their hand. It can have been no light task to sift, arrange, and index material so chaotic, and for the greater bulk of it so tedious, but thanks to his unselfish labours his more fortunate successors are enabled at their leisure to extract the plums from the dough.

W. R. Halliday.

Die Lebensalter. Ein Beitrag zur Antiken Ethnologic und zur Geschichte der Zahlen. Mit einem Anhang iiber die Schrift von der Siebenzahl. Von Franz Boll. Leipzig : B. G. Teubner, 1913. 8vo, pp. iv-l-58. Two pi. 2 tn. 40//.

That this book is reprinted from a periodical ^-will be revealed to the reader, who has omitted to notice the announcement on the fly-leaf, by the problems presented by the index. In the index the pagination of the periodical has inconveniently been retained. To save other victims of this maladresse the trouble of working

^ Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische AlUrttci/i, vol. xxxi.