28 Annual Address. [Feb. 



end in view. It is not enough merely to invite those interested in the 

 religious and social customs of the people of India to send in for 

 puhlication any information they may obtain. Inquiry must be stimu- 

 lated by indicating in some detail the manner in which it should be 

 conducted, and simplified and directed by stating the foi'm in which its 

 results should be recorded. 



The Council of the Society accordingly resolved last year to 

 circulate widely a set of questions which had been drawn up at my 

 request by Mr. William Crooke, late of the Indian Civil Service, the 

 author of The Popular Beligion and Folk-Lore of Northern India. If 

 persons interested in the subject will collect replies to the questions 

 and send tliem to the Anthropological Secretary of the Society, in 

 the form of papers or notes dealing with a particular custom or belief or 

 superstition, they will be published in the third part of the Journal. It 

 is hoped that in course of time sufficient information may thus be 

 collected to form the basis of a comparative study of the Folk-lore of 

 different parts of India. 



A few words of explanation may be added. Folk-lore has been 

 defined by the English Folk-lore Society as " the comparison and iden- 

 tification of the survivals of archaic beliefs, customs and traditions in 

 modern ages." The definition marks the distinction between Folk-lore 

 and the allied studies of ethnography, ethnology and anthropology, none 

 of which are exclusively concerned with survivals. But the tcim 

 ' survival,' which is of the essence of the definition, is itself relative, and 

 in considering how researches into Folk-lore should be conducted in 

 India, two points must be borne in mind. First, that in relation to 

 European institutions nearly the whole body of Indian custom, usage 

 and tradition may be regarded as a series of survivals. Secondly, that 

 within this series are to be found usages of different age and origin, 

 some of which may have survived or been adopted from Non-Aryan 

 sources. The latter have, as is well-known, a tendency to decline in 

 popular estimation and either to disappear or to be so transformed that 

 their origin can no longer be traced. Of recent years this tendency has 

 been increased by the spi'ead of education the revival of both Hinduism 

 and Islam and the extension of lailvvays which in the matter of usage 

 as in that of prices tends to produce a dead level of uniformity. It 

 should therefore be one of the chief objects of the inquiry now suggest- 

 ed to ascertain and record the more primitive customs and to endeavour 

 to distinguish them from those which are believed to be of Aryan 

 origin. Particular attention should be given (o those customs and 

 beliefs which are handed down orally and are not recorded in 

 writing. 



