Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/150

138 and that a lectureship on this subject has been founded in the University of Calcutta. In the first series of lectures he considers the questions connected with the Bengali versions of the great Indian epic, the "Ramayana," the work of Vālmīki. The first result of his analysis of the poem is that, as might have been anticipated, the poet used much of the current folk-tradition. Many incidents in the epic closely resemble tales in the Buddhist Jātaka. The second theory suggested is that originally the cycle of legends connected with the demigod Rāma and the demon Rāvana were distinct, and that it was left for the poet to combine them into one consistent narrative.

The second course of lectures deals with a series of folk-tales current among Musalmāns in Bengal, which evidently embody early Hindu tradition. The influence of women in preserving these tales, and particularly the scraps of poetry embodied in them, is illustrated in an interesting way, and he makes an important suggestion that tales of the Middle Kingdom, or the Upper Ganges Valley, were conveyed by the crews of ships sailing from the coast of Bengal to Persia, and thus were communicated to the people of the West long before any translations of collections like the Panchatantra or Hitopadesa were available.

The learned author of these lectures is doing admirable work in a field hitherto unexplored, and the University of Calcutta deserves hearty commendation in its efforts to encourage the study of Indian folklore.

D'Entrecasteaux are a small archipelago off the south-east coast of New Guinea bearing the name of their French discoverer. They are inhabited by a people of Melanesian race who, until recent years, have been left very much to themselves by the white intruders into southern seas. Mr. Jenness,