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a simple record of fact ; and theorising on these facts may better be left to the arm-chair philosopher of Europe. In dealing with Fetishism Mr. Risley records as a curiosity the worship of ofifice- boxes and ink-pots by the orderlies who carry the Government records to Simla. He might have said that this is the common form of worship of Sarasvati, the goddess of learning, which is carried out in this way in every village school of Bengal.
The survey of the multitudinous religions which prevail through- out the Peninsula is careful and interesting. Jainism, we now know, is not a development of Buddhism ; on the contrary, both these sects arose independently about the same time, and repre- sented a reaction against Brahmanic monopoly of the ascetic orders. An interesting account is given of what is supposed to be a survival of Buddhism in Bengal in the form of Dharma worship. It seems doubtful, however, how far this is due to Vaishnava influence, which itself drew much of its inspiration from Buddhism. In the appendix to this chapter will be found a valuable account of the beliefs of the animistic tribes of Bengal.
The chapter on Caste, Tribe, and Race brings together such a mass of material and theory on the ethnography of the country as to make any analysis of it within a limited space impossible. Every student of the subject must consider it as a whole. Scientific opinion in Europe seems to be gradually accepting the conclusion that hitherto excessive stress has been laid on cerebral measure- ments as a test of race, and that the anthropometry of the future must take account of a much wider collection of physical measure- ments than those on which Mr. Risley bases his conclusions.
The discussion of the physical characteristics of the people of India is followed by a most instructive dissertation on their division into castes and tribes. There is, perhaps, nothing very startling in the results of the inquiry, but the student has here placed at his disposal a mass of sociological facts of the highest interest, which were up to the present inaccessible in a readable form.
The final result of the investigation may be thus summarised. There are seven main physical types in India, of which the Dravidian alone is possibly indigenous. The Indo-Aryan, Mon- goloid, and Turko-Iranian types are, in the main, of foreign origin. The Aryo-Dravidian, Mongolo-Dravidian, and Scytho-Dravidian are formed by the crossing of foreigners with the Dravidians. This crossing inevitably resulted from the physical seclusion of
