Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/192

168 has had perseverance to carry it to an end, thus doing for the North-West Province what Mr. Risley has done for the adjoining province of Bengal

Like Mr. Risley's work, it is arranged in alphabetical order, and forms an encyclopædia of the ethnology of the province. Unlike that work, however, the physical statistics are not given in separate volumes, but at the end of each article. All the information, therefore, about every tribe or caste is found collected together: a plan which undoubtedly is of advantage to the student. All the volumes are illustrated with reproductions of excellent photographs of typical individuals of the principal tribes: a proceeding which adds greatly to the interest and value of the book.

The body of the work is prefaced by a valuable introduction discussing the origin of caste, the anthropometry of the province, and some of the peculiarities of the caste system as exhibited in the information collected, such as the connection of caste and occupation, nomenclature, and various questions arising out of marriage customs. The result of the enquiries is to show that no certain data can be found for the ethnological basis of caste. Ethnological distinctions have become blurred in the course of time, and the numerous military, social, and religious revolutions that India has seen. Anthropometry, however, exhibits a certain stratification of races. The occupational origin of the castes, advocated by Mr. Nesfield, is open, at least in the extreme form in which he enunciated the theory, to grave objections. The problem is complicated by the constant rise of new religious sects out of the bosom of Brahmanism, and by social ambitions which play continually into the hands of the Brahmans by the identification of the chief god of every, rising tribe with one of the great deities of the Hindu pantheon and the invention of a legend to account for it. Probably no one theory is sufficient to solve the questions of the origin of the various castes. Many influences have combined to form the existing state of things; and the accumulation of evidence must go much further before we can arrive at definite conclusions.

For students of folklore, perhaps the most interesting questions centre around the tribal nomenclature, the food-taboo, and the marriage rites and prohibitions.

Recent enquiries have given renewed importance to the study of totemism; and we naturally turn to the tribal nomenclature and