Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/220

194 sarit-Sāgara, where the king dies rather than commit wickedness. Whatever may be thought of this version, that of the Gátakamâlâ is certainly not the original. The relations of the English and Indian stories raise interesting questions. Priority of publication in writing would not prove transmission from India to England; and, if transmitted, where are the intermediate links?

Indian theories of the universe are touched upon in some of the tales. Thus, No. 14 relates the adventures of a company of merchants who voyaged over the various oceans which encircle the world; and No. 29 gives a lengthy account of the Buddhist hell. Other pieces of folklore crop up at intervals, as when we are told that "the spell-uttering voice together with medicine expels illnesses." "It is not the dress that makes the Muni," is the Buddhist form of our proverb "It is not the cowl that makes the monk."

In spite, therefore, of its literary character the Gátakamâlâ is worthy of attention by students of folklore; while for those who seek to understand the history and doctrines of Buddhism it is unquestionably a work of importance, enrolled as it is among the sacred books of the Northern Church. We welcome its appearance in the excellent English of Professor Speyer, and trust that the series it inaugurates may prove—as it ought to prove—attractive to English readers.

This book is an attempt to indicate the lines on which decorative art should be studied in order to bring out its value in the history of man. If the kindling of fire was the true starting-point in the erratic march which the minority of mankind has made from savagery to civilisation, the first tracing of lines as ornamentation was the starting-point of evolution from the utilitarian stage to that ideal life in which man realises that he "does not live by bread alone."

Professor Haddon's sojourn in New Guinea was wisely made the occasion of the study of barbaric man in more than one