the eyes almond-shaped and somewhat oblique; and the chin is short. In general, however, the physiognomy is more Iranian than the E. African and Egyptian."* The African. and Dravirian types are allied to the Iranian more closely than to the Turanian, and this physical approchement is in consistency with the geographical distribution of these great branches of the human family. The Africo-Semitic languages are highly Caucasian, and their original fount must have been S. W. Asiatic. The Dravirian family has a Caucasian element and appears to have also come from the same quarter. In the later stages of ancient Asiatic history the Iranians were paramount in the same province. All these southern forms of language have a Turanian basis; but they have also special affinities, indicating some connection at a period subsequent to their excommunication from the central Scythic family. The Semito-African family has the most varied and idiosyncratic development, and thus appears to have segregated the earliest. The Iranian takes the next place, as the Turanian basis, both structural and vocabular, has a more Scythic character. Dravrian is the most Scythic of all, and would thus appear to have maintained a close connection with the Scythic family to a comparatively late period.

men.

The effect of a change in locality or in the mode of subsistence, is seen in the Ba-Kalahari, who are believed to be the oldest BeChuana tribe of the south. The tradition is that they were formerly rich in cattle, but were despoiled of them by a new swarm, and driven into the Kalahari desert among the aboriginal BushThe latter are nomadic hunters, and prey on the herds of game, which they follow in all their wanderings. The Ba-Kalahari continue to practice agriculture and rear goats under all the difficulties of their present home, and their coarse and precarious. food has degraded them in person and mind. They have often the thin legs and arms and protruding abdomens of other tribes in this condition, and the timidity induced by their physical wretchedness helps to aggravate it by exposing them to the rapacity of other tribes.

Dr. Livingston does not furnish any connected view of the native customs, but several are incidentally noticed.

Each Be-Chuana tribe has a tabooed animal, from which its name is derived. This is a very ancient Asiatic custom, and is still preserved by Siberian, American and Australian tribes.

The poison ordeal is practised to the N. of the Zambesi, as in Madagascar.

It is believed that the souls of the dead mingle with the living,

* Ib.

and seek to take them away. The slayer makes a sacrifice to appease the spirit of the slain, "buang badi" of the Malays. Sickness is attributed to the influence of the spirits, and fowls and goats are sacrificed to them (p. 434). Persons may cause death by incantations; and charms are used for protection against them (440).

Among the Ba-Nyai the chief is elected, and the son of the deceased chief's sister is preferred to his children. This is an ancient custom still found among many tribes, and it probably originated in the desire to make certain that the blood of the family flows in the veins of the chief.

0

Among the southern tribes, beyond 20 S., boys on admittance, at adolescence, into the rank of men, undergo circumcision. Three of the tribes follow it by a severe flagellation which seams the back with wounds and weals. The rites of circumcision are carefully concealed. Three of the tribes have additional initiatory rites. Every six or seven years all the boys, from 10 to 14 or 15 years old, are enrolled as the companions for life of one of the sons of the chief. They are taken to a secluded place where dancing and other manly accomplishments are beaten into them. Each of these bands (mepato) takes a distinctive name, as Matsatsi, the suns, Ma-bu-sa, the rulers. In lieu of circumcision the Ba-Toka of both sexes knock out the upper front teeth at the of puberty. Initiatory virile rites, including severe tests of courage and endurance of pain, were universal in the archaic Asiatic civilisation, and like the other customs of the ancient world are now chiefly to be found among those tribes that early wandered to regions beyond the influence of the later civilizations, Chinese, Indo-Persian, Semitic, Egyptian.

age

The common Ba-Londa mode of salutation is by taking up sand and rubbing it on the shoulders and upper part of the arms (276). A more refined and polite method is to bring some ashes or pipeclay in a piece of skin and rub it on the chest and upper front part of each arm. Some drum their ribs with their elbows, others touch the ground with one cheek after another, and clap their hands. The Ba-Toka throw themselves down on their backs, roll from side to side and slap their thighs, more Andamannorum. (55). Deformed infants are generally destroyed by the Ba-Londa. Some tribes also kill childern and animals for certain eccentricities, called tlola (trangression), e. g. a child who cuts the upper front teeth before the under,-one of twins,-an ox which beats the ground with its tail while lying in the pen,-a cock that crows before midnight (577). In the same spirit among the Crwato BaMan and Ba-Kwain a man who is bitten by an alligator or has water splashed over him by the animal's tail is expelled from the tribe. A bite from a zebra is also a cause of expulsion.

At one part of the Zambesi the women pierce the upper lip and insert a shell (577).

All the northern tribes (20° et supra) sacrifice men to deceased chiefs. Human sacrifices are practised, and certain parts of the body are used as charms (588).

Cannibalism was practised until recently by some of the BeChuana of the Maluti range.

The large wooden mortars and pestles used by the Makololo and Makalaka for pounding maize are identical with those of the ancient Egyptians (195.) The mode of spinning and weaving practised by the Central tribes is also similar to that of the Egyptians. The hair is dressed by some in the Egyptian mode, plaiting it into cords hanging to the shoulder. [June 1858.]

NOTES ON BUDDHISM IN CEYLON AND SIAM,

The following notes have no pretence to profundity or erudition, and several learned works on Buddhism having already appeared in France and England, little could be said that is not already contained in those works. As those works are not easily accessible, a slight sketch of Buddhism in Ceylon and Siam may be acceptable to the readers of the Journal of the Eastern Archipelago, and if the Journal have any readers among the Ceylon planters, the most elementary sketch would increase their present stock of information, which can barely distinguish Buddhism from Hin

duism.

Buddhism in Ceylon and Siam is the same, and it differs in an essential point from that followed in Tibet, which is the form most familiarly known in Europe through the relation of the Revd, Father Huc. He tells us that in Tibet and Chinese Tartary there is always a living Buddha or incarnation of Buddha upon earth, who on his death is succeeded by another selected by the priests and known to them by certain signs. This the Ceylon Buddhists reject entirely; they say that there has been no other Buddha since Gautama Buddha, the fourth Buddha; and they say that there can only be one Buddha at a time.

Gautama or Sakya-muni, called by the Siamese Somano-khodom, was born 543 years B. C. in India, and though he was the first of the Buddhists, still there is good reason for not considering him as the author of the absurd mass of contradictions contained in Buddhism. The Buddhists deny the existence of any Supreme Being, or Creator; they say that the world has always existed, and that men came into it of their own accord, or of themselves, yet they maintain that a man's good or bad actions will influence his position in the next life. When asked, how so, if there is no Judge? they say that a man's actions will be like the weights in a scale, but they cannot tell who holds or who placed the scales.

Their idea of the highest happiness to be attained after death is expressed by the word "nirwana" which means literally extinction as of a candle. What this means, the priests do not like to the common people do not know at all, and say the priests do not know anything more about it than themselves. I could not find out that the formula "Hum mani padmè hum" used in Tibet, or any equivalent for it, was in use among the Singhalese.

say;

The priests will admit that Gautama Buddha and Sakya-muni were the same person, but if then pressed to say how a man like Sakya-muni could lay down laws, whilst they deny the existence of a Supreme authority that could have commissioned him to do so, they will back out of their admission in the best way they can. The best way to account for the numerous contradictions in Buddhism would seem to be found in the fierce wars carried on after the death of Sakya-muni by the Hindus against his followers, and which ended in their being totally vanquished, and expelled from Hindustan. The enmity against the Brahmins produced by their persecutions would be enough to induce the Buddhists to reject everything Hindu, which they did blindly, leaving themselves without any foundations. It must also be remembered that Sakya-muni's sayings were not collected and written down till very many years after his death.

In one temple in Ceylon I received an answer from a priest differing from the usual Buddhist belief and statements. I had asked him how men came upon earth, he answered Brahma Raja brought them down out of heaven. I then asked what had become of Brahma. His answer was singular and showed an antiHindu feeling-Brahma being the Hindu name for the Creator. "What do I know," said he, "whether he is alive or dead; when one sees a cocoanut tree who can tell what has become of the first cocoanut tree?" He then pointed out the picture of Brahma on the wall of the temple; there were three figures side by side; I asked who the other two were. "It is all Brahma", he said; and how did he become three? "By his own choice and will", was the priest's reply. In spite of the inherent contradictions of Buddhism very few converts to Christianity are made in Ceylon or in Siam; in Ceylon many pass for Christians and are only found out to be Buddhists at their deaths or when seized with illness when they will send for a Buddhist priest. I heard of a Buddhist priest having gone to a missionary school and having stayed there a year, and the missionaries thought that they had converted him, but at the end of that time he resumed his priests yellow robes, and took leave of them, saying, "What you have taught me is very beautiful, but what we have got ourselves is much better." One reason that the Buddhist