3 AUGUST 1912, Page 25

The Mundas and their Country. By Sarat Chandra Roy. (Thacker,

Spink, Calcutta. Os. 6d.)—Anthropologists will welcome this careful account of the Mundas. This tribe is the largest of the " Kolarian" tribes in the Chota Nagpur division of Bengal. Though in race they are not distinguishable from the Dravidian, who have been generally regarded as the aboriginal inhabitants of India, their language can now no longer be regarded as allied to the Dravidian. The first part of the book is occupied with a history of the tribe and an attempt at solving the difficult pro- blems that surround its origins. But possibly its most interesting section is the ethnographical one, in which the tribal customs are described in detail.