_ tion. 
NATURE 
159 
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1913. 
HAUSA FOLK-LORE AND CUSTOMS. 
Hausa Folk-Lore, Customs, Proverbs, &c., Col- 
lected and Transliterated with English Transla- 
tion and Notes. By R. Sutherland Rattray. 
With a preface by R. R. Marett. Vol. i., 
pp. xxiv+ 327; vol. ii, pp. 315. . (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1913.) Price, 2 vols., 30s. 
net. . 
HIS book is intended to serve two distinct 
objects: to serve as a chrestomathy of the 
Hausa language, and as a collection of the local 
folk-lore and custom. It contains a series of 
_lithographed Hausa texts, with a transliteration 
in Roman characters and a literal English transla- 
The method employed is to reproduce the 
MSS. written by a learned Hausa Mdlam or 
scribe, who wrote down or translated from Arabic 
sources such information as was required, and this 
was subsequently translated into Hausa. By this 
process the primary intention of the work is satis- 
factorily attained. Mr. Rattray is obviously a 
competent scholar, and in the course of the work 
he has been able to correct or extend the work 
of previous writers on Hausa grammar and 
phonology. 
These admirably printed volumes thus represent 
a substantial contribution to linguistics, but the 
attempt to collect folk-lore and custom is not quite 
so satisfactory. The learned native scribe, like the 
Indian Pundit or Moulvi, is not the best agent 
le ale tl 
for exploring the peasant beliefs and usages. He 
is apt to regard popular tradition and custom as 
of little value when they do not happen to conform 
to his standard of orthodoxy, and to introduce into 
his material something which is of purely literary 
origin and does not smell of the soil. In this 
respect Major Tremearne, in his recently published 
“Hausa Superstition and Custom,” seems to have 
followed a sounder method by recording in his 
own hand the tales and superstitions which he 
heard from the lips of privates in the Nigeria 
Regiment, peasants, women and children. 
Mr. Rattray has arranged his material in five 
divisions: traditionary accounts of the origin of 
the Hausa nation and of their conversion to Islam; 
tales of heroes and heroines; animal tales; customs 
and arts; proverbs. Among the tales we find 
many familiar motifs and incidents—the cannibal 
giant with his ‘‘Fee-fo-fum”; Beauty and the 
Beast, and so on. The animal tales are decidedly 
the best in the collection, and well illustrate the 
naive cunning and wit which characterise the race. 
- The formule introducing and closing the tales are 
interesting. They begin with “This is a story ! appear. 
NO. 2293, VOL. 92] 
about” so and so; “a tale, let it go, let it ‘come,” 
ending with “Off with the rat’s head!” that is, 
“that is the end of him.” 
The accounts of custom are rather disappoint- 
ing, because, unless the Malam is mistaken, Islam 
has crushed down most of the indigenous prac- 
tices. Perhaps the most valuable chapters are 
those describing, from native sources, the cire 
perdue process of brass-casting, as it appears in 
the remarkable figures from Benin, and an account 
of the primitive method of tanning skins. 
The book, as a whole, deserves hearty com- 
mendation. But in his next attempt to add to 
his stores of local folk-lore and usage Mr. Rattray 
might with advantage dispense with the services 
of his Mdlam and depend upon himself for the 
task of collection. 
INDIAN CHRONOGRAPHY. 
Indian Chronography: extension of the 
“Indian Calendar,” with working examples. 
By Robert Sewell. Pp. xii+187. (London: 
George Allen & Co., Ltd., 1912.) Price 31s. 6d. 
net. 
INDU chronology appears extremely com- 
plex at first glance, but this complexity is 
more apparent than real, being largely due to the 
fact that so many different systems of reckoning 
were used in different places and at different times. 
Each single system is comparatively simple, and 
—save for the neglect of the effects due to pre- 
cession—fairly accurate. The standard work on 
the subject is the “Indian Calendar,” by Messrs. 
Sewell and Dikshit (NatuRE, vol. liv., No. 1393), 
to which the present volume forms a supplement. 
We have here a condensed account of those 
systems of chronology usually met with in in- 
scriptions and documents, which are more fully 
treated in the previous work. Some space is 
devoted to the tropical year in view of the fact 
that this unit is occasionally met with, while the 
method of reckoning by Jovian Samivatsaras is 
fully described. 
The volume contains a very large number of 
carefully worked examples and numerous tables, 
numbered to run consecutively with those of the 
previous volume. These include tables for the 
conversion of the moment of Mésha Samkranti 
by the First Arya Siddhanta into the same moment 
of the Present Surya Siddhanta; tables of the 
sixty- and twelve-year cycles of Jupiter, &c. 
Table I. of the “Indian Calendar” is carried for- 
ward to A.D. 1950; while Tables W, Y, Z (now 
XXXIII., XXXIV., XXXV.) of the Additions 
and Corrections to the “Indian Calendar” re- 
In Table XXXIII., “For finding the 
G 
An 
