"BENGALI CULTS AND MYTHS."
(To MU EDITOR. or THE " SPECTATOR.") Sre,.—In dealing with the above book by Professor Bones, Kumar Sarkar in your issue of July 14th your reviewer makes two statements which are open to question. Although discouraged by the British Government, hook-swinging is not, I believe, " forbidden " in the sense of being illegal. Again, not only " formerly " did the devotee have sharp hooks thrust under the sinews of his back, but the same custom is still practised to-day. unless it has ceased since 1912, when in a certain area it wan taking place on a fairly large scale. I Iliad the honour of reading a paper on the subject before the Anthropological Section of the British Association in 1513, printed in Folk-Lore, vol. XXV., No. 2. In that paper the records of the rite, as described by travellers and others, from the early part of the sixteenth century onwarrla, are exhaustively dealt with, and I endeavoured to trace the origin and significance of the ceremony from an examination of its geographical distribution, its similarity to a certain form of human sacrifice, and the infernal evidence and attendant circum- stances of the rite. So far as I am aware, my es/Delusions were not only accepted by the British Association and the Folk-Lore Society, but they have never been called in question by any com-
petent authority.—I am, Sir, dr., J. II. Powert
Wort:Scaled in AnIhrapo!ogr). Oxon.
Christ Church 1'icara0e, icailsea, near Bristol.
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