RELIGION AND ART IN ASHANTI. By Captain C. S• Rattray.
(The Clarendon Press. 30s.)—It was pointed out in that extraordinarily illuminating book, Mr. Edwin Smith's The Golden Stool, that it is before all-things- necessary
that a native administrator should acquire knowledge of and feel sympathy with the soul of his people. This is where the field anthropologist is of supreme use, and no more brilliant example of the usefulness of anthropological work could be afforded than by Captain Rattray's long-continued observation of the Ashanti people. The present volume completes his survey of Ashanti religion—and in the term religion is included almost every action and thought of primitive peoples, while to this is added a comprehensive account of Ashanti arts and crafts. A book of record mainly, which avoids theories, it is essentially a quarry for the comparative anthropologist. Additions by other hands are chapters on Dreams and Dream Interpretations by Dr. C. G. Seligman, on Cross-Cousin Marriages by Mr. Dudley Buxton, on the Aesthetic of Ashanti by Mr. Vernon Blake, on the pebble and cup game of Want by Dr. G. T. Bennett, while Dr. R. R. Marett contri- butes a kind of analysis of some of Captain Rattray's observa- tions of religious ritual.
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