THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN 713

woman; and the numerous points of contact between the

Palaung and Khasi languages which have been referred to
before by Sir George Grierson, Logan, Schmidt, and Blagden.
There are, however, some points of dissimilarity. The Khasis
observe the matriarchate and practise it to this day, women
are the owners of all real property, descent being reckoned
through the female. This does not appear to be the case
with the Palaungs. The Khasis erect memorial stones, and
in particular stones to their reputed primeval ancestress.
There is no mention of any such Palaung custom. The
Khasis burn their dead and preserve the ashes in clan or
family ossuaries. The Palaungs bury their dead, except in
the cases of some of their chiefs who are burnt. The Palaungs
are Buddhists, the Khasis, except those who have become
Christians, are animists. The practice of divination by the
breaking of eggs, so prevalent amongst the Khasis, does not
seem to obtain amongst the Palaungs, who on the contrary
appear to have adopted the Shan custom of foretelling events
by means of the femur bones of fowls, which are scraped of
every vestige of flesh, small bamboo splinters being inserted
into the foramina. The diagram given on p. 273 in this
connexion is similar to those we have seen in the possession
of some Ahom deodhais, or priests, in Assam, the Ahoms
being, of course, Shans. Mrs. Leslie Milne is to be heartily
congratulated on the result of her long and patient studies of
a tribe hitherto almost unknown, except to the readers of the
Upper Burma and Shan States Gazetteer, and we are deeply
grateful to her for having presented to us her conclusions in
such a readable and convenient form. Her beautiful photo-
graphs and the excellent index are useful additions.
P. E. GUEDON.

THE CHILDREN or THE SUN. By W. J. PERRY, M.A.

8 | X 5|, xv + 552 pp., 16 maps. London : Methuen &
Co., Ltd., 1923.
In this work an attempt is made to prove that all civilization
is essentially one, being derived ultimately by diffusion
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 714 NOTICES OF BOOKS

from a single centre, to wit Egypt. The author supports

this thesis by a comparative study of an enormous number of
facts covering a very large part of the world's area and
derived from a great many different sources, of very varying
value. It is permissible to doubt whether such an all-
embracing thesis can ever be strictly proved. But even if it
were only "invested with a considerable degree of probability ",
this line of research is no doubt an interesting and legitimate
one and many readers might well be grateful for a scientific
classification of the facts compared, though they might not
agree with the author's inferences from them. Civilization
presents many problems. Why does it crop up here and not
there ? Why does it tend to decay after it has reached a
certain point ? Why does it, where it exists, show a relative
uniformity of character ? And why is such uniformity often
impaired by the absence of certain elements that are found
elsewhere 1
To some of these questions the old school of anthropologists,
so far as it dealt with them at all, replied that human minds
and needs are much the same everywhere, except in so far as
environments differ and on occasion individuals of excep-
tionally original mentality are born who start new movements
which may or may not develop further according to local
circumstances, favourable or otherwise. The new school
represented by the author of this bookfindsthese explanations
unsatisfactory. It regards the relative uniformity of the
human mind as a mere a priori assumption, and, by implica-
tion at any rate, counters it with another, namely that nothing
was ever invented or discovered more than once and that real
originality was confined to one small centre. It is, however,
difficult to understand why one region, and one only, should
have been so singularly favoured by fortune. We must
believe, it seems, that the rest of the world waited indefinitely
in an attitude of passive and patient receptivity until Egyptian
ideas percolated to it by slow degrees.
What then is the " archaic civilization " which is supposed
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 THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN 715

to have been thus diffused ? Mr. Perry enumerates fifteen

elements of it, including inter alia such diverse matters as
agriculture by means of irrigation, certain uses of stone,
pottery-making, metal-working, the sun-cult, certain kinds of
human sacrifices, mother-right, totemic clans, and exogamy.
It is only by a considerable stretch of the term " civilization "
that some of these can be included under it, but he is entitled
to define his terms in his own way. He accounts for the
diffusion of the elements he enumerates by the theory of an
early and widespread search for valuable materials such as
gold, pearls, copper, etc. The " Children of the Sun",
adventurers from the supposed original civilized centre,
wandered over a great part of the earth to seek such things, and
some of them settled down in places where they found them
and there propagated all or some of the elements of their own
civilization.
It is certainly a curious and heterogeneous list. Social
systems are not easily imposed nor are they objects of barter
like pots or knives ; they grow up from deep-seated and very
ancient roots. One would have thought that mother-right,
for example, was not a thing that even a primitive savage
need have required to be taught by immigrants of higher
culture. Its substratum, the uniquely intimate relationship of
a child to its mother, is obviously everywhere a simple matter
of observed fact, whereas fatherhood is in essence an act of
faith and a pious opinion. It is, therefore, quite in harmony
with this fundamental fact that traces of mother-right have
been found practically all over the inhabited world. Why
suppose that in every case (except one) they are of alien
introduction ? Totemism, again, involves ideas of the close
relation of man to animals, plants, etc., which seem to belong
rather to the childhood of the race than to any influence from
a higher civilization ; and the exogamy that so often accom-
panies it is susceptible of several explanations, none of which
has so far been conclusively proved to be the right one.
Mr. Perry would derive exogamy from " a compact between
JBAS. OCTOBER 1924. 46
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 716 NOTICES OF BOOKS

the two sides of the ruling group, whereby intermarriage

took place" (p. 382). But intermarriage is one thing,
exogamy is quite another; and the hypothesis of a sort of
contrat social of exclusive intermarriage strikes one as an
eighteenth century conception somewhat incongruous in
a modern environment. Is it credible that such a wide-
spread institution, presumably corresponding to some real or
supposed need, or based on some idea which we have not as
yet been able to recapture, was imposed from without on an
enormous number of savage tribes by foreign rulers who for
some unexplained reason (perhaps a reason of state) had
adopted it for themselves 1 And why should the cult of the
ubiquitous sun have awaited a long delayed foreign intro-
duction ?
Some years ago an erudite German tried to find the original
source of all civilization in Babylonia. Now it has been
shifted to the valley of the Nile. But recent researches in
Mesopotamia seem to indicate that Egypt may find its old
rival in the field again. And if a single centre of civilization
is to be postulated, who knows that somewhere or other on
earth there may not have been one more ancient than either
of these two ? Few countries are fortunate enough to have
a climate that can preserve their most ancient records from
decay. In that respect, it must be conceded, Egypt and
Babylonia have indeed been highly favoured by nature. But
that fact does not suffice to prove that either of them was
the oldest civilized centre; and anyhow, is there any real
need for a single centre as a sort of deus ex machina ?
I have referred to the multifarious variety of the materials
from which the main thesis of this book is built up. It
would take half a dozen specialists to test or sift them in
their entirety, and sometimes they have been rather too much
for Mr. Perry. I can only attempt to follow him in a few
matters of detail affecting a small department of his researches,
and must leave the evidence drawn from India, America, etc.,
for others to discuss, merely remarking in passing that his
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 THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN 717

inveterate Euhemerism turns Asuras, Garudas, and Nagas into

rival tribes of men. But I note with some surprise his state-
ment (pp. 104-5) that the Polynesians left India about
450 B.C. (though another authority cited in a footnote would
make their point of departure the Persian Gulf). To say
nothing of the astonishingly late date, all linguistic evidence
(for what it is worth) connects them not with India or Persia
but with the coast of Indo-China, especially the eastern part
thereof. It is more than doubtful whether the Malays
" originated in the Menangkabau district of Sumatra",
and it is quite certain that " their earliest migrations " did
not " date from about A.D. 1160, when they settled in
Singapore " (p. 109). This entirely apocryphal date is based
merely on calculations of the lengths of reigns of Malay
rulers as given in the Sejarah Melayu, a Malay " historical "
work of the early part of the seventeenth century, whose
chronology was utterly disproved by myself more than a
quarter of a century ago. Moreover, one does not see the
relevance of such a statement, which is followed by others
about the spread of the Hinduized Javanese, Islamized Bugis,
etc. Nobody ever denied that many races have migrated,
but what has all this to do with the diffusion of an archaic
civilization which ex hypothesi must have happened (if at all)
a great many centuries before these relatively recent move-
ments ? Elsewhere (pp. 83,86) Mr. Perry repeats the exploded
legend of Phoenician influence and a Phoenician script in
Sumatra. The supposed Phoenician script of Sumatra is most
indubitably merely a local modification of Southern Brahmi,
and in this case the author relies with undue confidence on
Gerini (whose own sources are cited in his Researches on
Ptolemy's Geography, p. 597, n.). I do not stress such minor
inaccuracies as the application of the name " Austronesian "
to the Austroasiatic group of languages or the spelling of
" Taking " as " Tailing " (p. 95). But it seems worth while to
point out that Mr. Perry's sources are not always unimpeach-
able. Incidentally, it must be recorded that a long Biblio-

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 718 NOTICES OF BOOKS

graphy and full Index make it easy to thread one's way

amongst them.
I cannot venture to anticipate the degree of acceptance
which these new theories may achieve. For my own part,
I must confess that in spite of the learning and ingenuity of
this new school, in which Mr. Perry holds high rank, I remain
entirely unconvinced.
C. 0. BLAGDEN.

Works on Indo-China and Indonesia

AES ASIATICA V : BEONZES KHMEES. By GEOEGE CQEDES.
13f X10J, 63 pp., 51 plates. Paris and Brussels : G. van
Oest et Cie., 1923.
This beautifully illustrated descriptive catalogue of bronzes
is based upon data gathered by P. Lefevre-Pontalis in the
public and private collections at Bangkok, the royal palace at
Phnom Penh, and the museums of Cambodia and the French
School at Hanoi. It is preceded by an Introduction dealing
with former publications on the subject and a general descrip-
tion of the objects dealt with. These objects, in various
alloys of metal that may, for short, be classed under the
generic term " bronze ", are of special interest both from the
artistic and the iconographical point of view, being mostly
statuettes of Hindu or Buddhist divinities and worshipful
personages (Buddhas and Bodhisattvas), or else adjuncts to
religious rites, such as bells, candlesticks, etc. They illustrate
the development of a branch of Indian art in the old kingdom
of Cambodia, which was artistically the most important region
of Indo-China.
The author, while frankly pointing out that small bronzes
are easily transported and that, generally speaking, the place
of origin of any individual piece is unknown, lays down certain
canons which, in his view, make it possible to distinguish
Cambodian bronzes from those of Siam and India proper.
It must be admitted that, broadly speaking, these various
schools have strikingly characteristic differences. But in

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