done anything for his country he felt that he could claim the love and good-will of his people. But he would certainly not expect from his countrymen a mere echo of the sentiment of the West. If the honor they showed him in India did not carry with it the love and good wishes of the mother he would throw it away, just as a loving child flings away a toy given by its mother when it is discovered to be a mere fake. It might be said that a poet was oftentimes more honored by posterity than by his own generation. But, the poet observed, posthumous fame had no attraction for him. He hungered for the love and affection of his country, and if his fellow countrymen could offer him these he would be quite satisfied. He thoroughly detests the tinsel sheen of honor, for it has nothing of warmth in it.

It may be interesting to note that, although the most popular poet of India, Rabindra Nath Tagore is not altogether a favorite with a certain school of criticism in Bengal. His originality and mysticism seem to have been beyond the depth of these critics, whose standard of measurement of poetic genius was borrowed from a past generation. The number and influence of these detractors however is not such as to justify Dr. Tagore in charging his countrymen in general with slowness of appreciation or want of gratitude. Even before he first sailed for the West the Bangiya Sahitya Parisat (the Academy of Bengali Literature), being the foremost and most representative institution of its kind in India, gave him such a public reception in Calcutta as might turn a viceroy green with envy.

MISCELLANEOUS.

OUR INDIA NUMBER.

We take pleasure in presenting in this issue a number of articles relating to India and treating the subject in many different phases. The authors are all prominent men in their various fields, but as all may not be equally known to our readers a few words of introduction will not be out of place.

Mr. William Alanson Borden writes on "The Religions of India" from the point of view of a student who has had opportunity for close observations. He spent the three years from 1910 to 1913 in the native Indian state of Baroda which is about the size of Massachusetts. He was invited there by the wise and public-spirited native ruler of Baroda for the purpose of instituting a system of free public libraries throughout the state. The story of what he was able to accomplish in establishing circulating and traveling libraries and training librarians for their administration was told in the December 1913 issue

of the Library Journal. This article also shows the contrast in this respect between the state of Baroda and the rest of India, giving sole credit to the enlightened Maharajah to whom Mr. Roy likewise pays an incidental tribute in his article.

Mr. Ram Chandra is the energetic editor of The Hindustan Gadar of San Francisco, an organ of the sympathizers of the Indian nationalist party outside of India. He writes from the fulness of his heart and in the conviction of the truth of his position. The first editor of the Gadar was Mr. Har Dayal, at one time professor at Leland Stanford University. But his work was so zealous and effective that the British government made it too uncomfortable for him to continue and he went to Europe in 1914. We make this reference to him because our readers may remember the article he contributed to The Open Court in March 1912 on "What the World is Waiting for," a plea for a spirit of renunciation in our nervous occidental life.

Mr. Basanta Koomar Roy is a young Hindu with an American university education. He is most closely associated in the minds of the American public with the name of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and his article on Tagore which The Open Court published in July 1913 was among the first interpretative accounts of the Hindu poet that appeared in the magazines of this country. Since that time Mr. Roy has published many articles on Tagore in other periodicals and finally gathered together much new information on the subject in book form.

Mr. Roy also conducted for a short time a department in The Open Court on "Currents of Thought in the Orient." He is deeply interested in the Indian nationalist movement and knows many of its leaders. We also hold another article of Mr. Roy's on "Marriage à la Hindu” which we could not make room for in this number but we hope will appear soon.

Prof. A. M. Reese of the department of zoology at the West Virginia University recently made a collecting tour across the Pacific in the service of the Smithsonian Institution. On this trip he took many photographs, some of which accompanied his description of the route "From Zamboanga to Singapore" in the February Open Court, and others illustrate his article on Singapore in the present issue.

The author of "Why India Did not Revolt" is a native German and a traveler of keen observation who has had exceptional opportunities to know conditions in India because he was for many years on the editorial staff of a Madras journal.

The writer who contributes the article on "Christianity in India" is also an editor in India but prefers to write usually under the pen-name "Chinmoy." In consideration of the lives of self-sacrifice which are led by Christian missionaries in Oriental lands and the criticism that is often brought against them for their lack of tact and the meagerness of their results, it is pleasant to read Chinmoy's tribute to their comparative success.

Mr. Kshitish Chandra Neogy is an editorial writer of India, having been associated for some time with The Indian World of Calcutta. His article on Tagore gives a glimpse of that philosopher and mystic from his countrymen's point of view after his first visit to the Occident when he was knighted in England and was awarded the Nobel Prize, but before his recent visit. It will be of interest to the many friends he has made through his poems and the charm of his personality.

THE NESTORIAN MONUMENT IN ROME.

Our readers will be interested to learn that the replica of the famous Nestorian monument which Dr. Frits Holm procured in his expedition of 1908 to Sian-fu and brought to this country, has finally found a fitting permanent home in the Vatican museum. It was purchased from Dr. Holm by Mrs. George Leary of New York, in order that she might present it as the earliest Christian monument in China to Pope Benedict XV. Dr. Holm went to Rome to make the presentation in Mrs. Leary's behalf and took occasion, in the audience granted by the Pope on November 26, to acknowledge the honor conferred on him last spring when he was made Knight Commander of the Order of St. Sylvester. The Pope accepted the monument which had already reached Genoa and has probably found its place in the Vatican collections by this time. Dr. Holm gave two illustrated lectures in Rome during December on the monument itself and his Chinese expedition, one at the palace of Cardinal Gasquet and the other under the auspices of the American Academy at Rome.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.

DAS WEIB IM ALTINDISCHEN EPOS. Ein Beitrag zur indischen und zur vergleichenden Kulturgeschichte. Von Johann Jakob Meyer, Leipsic: Heims, 1915. Pp. 440.

Unknown to the world at large there lives in Chicago a scholar of great learning, the son of a Michigan farmer, modest and without pretensions but filled with knowledge of Indian antiquity, language and literature. He is a Sanskritist by profession, but his name is not so well known, perhaps, as his extraordinary scholarship deserves. It is Johann Jakob Meyer, and the best evidence of his scholarship lies in this, his latest work.

Dr. Meyer's book treats of woman as, she is represented in the ancient Indian epics, and the work is a contribution to the comparative history of civilization. For his motto the author writes on the fly leaf preceding the preface a verse which King Nala addresses to Damayanti in the Mahâbhârata. It reads in a poor English translation thus:

"As long, O woman brightly smiling,

As my breath in my body liveth,

So long will my being center in thee,

To thee I swear it, oh pearl of womankind."

The book makes very entertaining reading, but it is first of all a serious scientific work and will be valuable to Indianists. It is not a collection of glittering generalities, but consists of chapters containing results of our author's study portrayed in many incidents cited from the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana. This method, to be sure, expands the work to great length, but it is the only one that could successfully be employed, for the reader would scarcely be satisfied with general summaries. He naturally prefers to meet the real characters, the Hindu women themselves, and to become acquainted with them in their native surroundings in the warm southern climate of India and amid the strange conditions of Indian culture and Indian religion. In these portrayals we observe side by side the contrasting elements of a sensuous fire

of passion and the calm resignation of a marvelous world-flight. Since the two great epics of India in their present shape represent the work of many hands in many periods of time, it is not strange that the passages here gathered together should represent many conflicting views.

The score of chapters deal with every possible phase of woman in ancient India as maiden, as bride, as wife, as mother, as courtesan, as consort, as housewife, as widow, as property, as the ideal of womanhood; chapters are also devoted to woman's position in the home and the state, and to her character and influence.

In the first chapter, dealing with girlhood, Mr. Meyer illustrates how unwelcome girl babies were in the families of epic times, and on the other hand how they soon won a welcome for themselves. He gives incidents of good daughters and unruly ones and shows how highly chastity was regarded and how sorry was the lot of the one who violated its law. Incidents are also told from the epics to show in what case it was allowable for girls to make advances in matters of love. The next chapter tells whom the girl may marry and how, citing her father's privileges and obligations with regard to her, and enumerating the four kinds of marriage, by capture, by purchase, the orthodox so-called Gandharva marriage and that in which the girl herself may make her choice. Caste-regulations with regard to marriage, the systems of polyandry and hetaerism are discussed and the rule that younger brothers and sisters must not be married before the older ones. Then we have a brief chapter on marriage ceremonies and customs followed by one devoted to family life in general.

We are also told of the dignity and important position of the mother in the family and the beautiful relation between the mother and her children as well as relative positions of mother and father, when the child's duties to both are conflicting. The next four chapters deal with the laws and customs that controlled all phases of sexual intercourse in the time of the great epics, while one long chapter rceounts the tales and lyrics devoted to the noble conception of love and romance, and the following one deals with the dignity and rewards of a faithful wife. Chapter twelve collects the passages referring to the physiological and metaphysical aspects of the origin of man.

Mr. Meyer devotes another chapter to the comparatively few incidents in the great epics in which the mistress of the house appears as a dispenser of hospitality, and in her domestic aspect generally. He mentions here the beautiful relation that obtains between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. We also see woman as the epics portray her in times of sorrow and suffering and especially in widowhood which with its hard restrictions is the greatest grief the Indian woman is called upon to bear. In the seventeenth chapter Mr. Meyer puts together for us a composite picture of the ideal woman, with respect both to character and physical perfections, as regarded by the poets of ancient India.

In a further chapter dealing with the position of woman and the esteem in which she is held we learn that she often exerted great influence in important matters. Some laws permitted the government of kingdoms to descend to female heirs in default of male, although this is declared to be a misfortune for the state. In many instances wives accompanied their husbands to battle, to the hunt, etc. Polygamy was regarded as perfectly allowable (though no woman could have more than one husband), and Mr. Meyer gives illustrative

incidents of the enmities and heart burnings arising from the custom. Nevertheless there are very specific regulations to the effect that the wife must be affectionately cared for and considerately treated. It is clear from the passages cited in the twentieth chapter that woman in those days was looked upon as the sum and substance of everything evil, full of falsehood and deceit, insatiable in love and always unchaste, fickle, quarrelsome, imprudent and curious, in short the creation of bad women could be accounted for only by the necessity of preventing heaven from being overpopulated. The Indian poets of old admitted to woman's credit only that she is compassionate, at least sometimes, and she is not regarded as beyond salvation.

In the days of the epics women were treated as chattels. Girls were presented as gifts, and the surrender of daughter or wife to Brahmans was looked upon as a means of acquiring great merit. Women of the household were loaned to guests or friends for their enjoyment-not only slave girls but even the daughter or wife.

But never do the epics of ancient India cast any doubt on the power of woman in war and peace, for weal and woe. This power lay in her beauty, her tears, her smiles, her allurements. She secured the love and devotion of her husband by means of magic charms, pious deeds and her own fidelity.

A translation of this monumental work into English would certainly be very welcome to large circles of people interested in old Indian lore, though the difficulties of the task will prove very great to the average translator, because it presupposes more than common scholarship. кр

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES. Edited by Louis H. Gray, A.M., Ph.D. Vol. I. Greek and Roman. By William Sherwood Fox, A.M., Ph.D. Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1916. Pages, lxii, 354.

As the first of this excellent series this volume contains a comprehensive preface for the whole edition by the editor, Dr. Gray, and an introductory preface by the consulting editor, Dr. George Foot Moore. We are told that much of the material used appears here in the English language for the first time, especially the Slavic and Finno-Ugric, Oceanic, Armenian and African lore. Then too no survey of American mythology as a whole has hitherto been written, and in other familiar fields new points of view have been presented. Dr. Gray takes this occasion to introduce the subject and author of each volume. The second volume is devoted to Teutonic mythology, consisting almost wholly of the old Icelandic sagas; the third is divided between Celtic and Slavic; the fourth discusses Finno-Ugric and Siberian folk-religion; the fifth, Semitic; the sixth again is divided between Indian and Persian; the seventh between Armenian and African; the eighth is shared by Taoism and Shintoism as representing the chief mythologies of China and Japan. The ninth volume contains the mythology of the Malayo-Polynesian and Australian peoples which form a sharp contrast in primitive types. The tenth volume treats the Indians north of Mexico, and the eleventh those of Latin America, both by the same author. The twelfth volume combines a study of Egyptian and Burman mythology.

Having thus outlined the scope of the series but little space remains in which to do justice to Dr. Fox's excellent treatment of classical mythology in the first volume. It presents a number of typical myths in whose selection religion in its most comprehensive form has been the standard. Contrary to