Mr. Dennett's views on Bantu categories, or classes into which all facts of the visible world are arranged, should be already well known to folklorists. In this shilling pamphlet he extends his investigation to the classes into which Bavili and Bakongo words are divided by certain prefixes which, (like the affixes -ness, -dom, -tion, etc. in English), are attached to large numbers of the nouns. He suggests that the notions of the order of the seasons etc. set out in his Nigerian Studies have also subconsciously affected the noun classes. (Nzambi, by the way, is explained (p. 15), not as one of the many forms Onyame, Nyambe, Nyambi, etc. of an All Father name over a great area from Ashanti to the east and south, but as the "personal essence of the fours" so common in Bavili philosophy.) The subject is a very puzzling one, and the reader, with Bentley's Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language before him, must judge how far Mr. Dennett's collection of words is representative and how far it supports his theory.
This fresh translation from the Sanscrit of fifty-six of the "Suka Saptati" or Seventy Tales of a Parrot is spirited and flowing. It will probably interest many in these characteristic Eastern tales who would be wearied by a more literal and complete translation, and, while we think a few explanatory notes would have increased its usefulness, we welcome it as an aid in the popularisation of the materials of our study.
Books for Review should he addressed to
The Editor of Folk-Lore,
c/o David Nutt,
57-59 Long Acre, London, W.C.
