The curious account of Sālāgrams and the derivation of the name quoted by Mr. Thurston from the Madras Mail (vol. i, p. 321) is worthy of mention as a specimen of erroneous modern explanation. Mr. Thurston might have warned his reader against accepting the derivation there assigned from sarachakra (a discus) and grava (a stone) as a possible explanation of the word Sālagrāma. It is impossible to do more than indicate slightly the nature of this valuable compendium of facts, which will be indispensable to all students of early custom. The work has been well printed at Madras, and is illustrated by a number of photo- graphs, many of which are excellent.
Father Schmidt employs the term Austronesia to denote the islands of Indonesia (including Formosa and Madagascar), Melanesia, and Polynesia, and regards the racial unity of their inhabitants as established by a study of their languages.[1] In the present works,—of which the second is an abridgment of the first, read before the Anthropological Society of Vienna,—he offers a comparative analysis of their mythologies. In the survey filling the first eight chapters he distinguishes two main types of myth,—the lunar, which prevails over Nias and among the Bataks, Dyaks, and Melanesians,—and the solar, which is found in the south-eastern and south-western islands of the Sunda archipelago, and the southern Moluccas, and among all Polynesians. In Celebes, and to a certain degree in Polynesia, these two types are blended. Father Schmidt regards the lunar as
- ↑ Mitteil. d. Anthrop. Ges. in Wien, vol. xxix.
