contemplate the idea of a dog in heaven! Yudhisthira is begged therefore to send away the dog. Strange to say, he refuses. To him the dog appears as one who has been devoted, loyal in time of loss and disaster, loving and faithful in the hour of entire solitude. He cannot imagine happiness, even in heaven, if it were to be haunted by the thought of one so true who had been cast off.

The god pleads and argues, but each word only makes the sovereign more determined. His idea of manliness is involved. "To cast off one who has loved us is infinitely sinful." But also his personal pride and honour as the king, are roused. He has never yet abandoned the terrified, or the devoted, or such as have sought sanctuary with him, nor one who has begged mercy, nor any who was too weak to protect himself. He will certainly not infringe his own honour, merely out of a desire for personal happiness.

Then the most sacred considerations are brought to bear on the situation. It must be remembered that the Hindu eats on the floor, and the dread of a dog entering the room is therefore easy to understand. There is evidently an equal dislike of the same thing in Heaven. "Thou knowest," urges Indra, "that by the presence of a dog, Heaven itself would be defiled." His mere glance deprives the sacraments of their consecration. Why then should one who has renounced his very family, so strenuously object to giving up a dog?

Yudhisthira answers bitterly that he had to abandon those who did not live to accompany him further; and admitting that his resolution has probably been growing, in the course of the debate, finally declares that he cannot now conceive of a crime that would be more heinous than to leave the dog.

The test is finished. Yudhisthira has refused heaven for the sake of a dog; and the dog stands transformed into a shining god, Dharma himself, the God of Righteousness. The mortal is acclaimed by radiant multitudes, and seated in the chariot of glory, he enters heaven in his mortal form.

Even now, however, the poet has not made clear all that is to be required of a perfect man. Elevated alone to a position of great glory, Yudhisthira, entering Heaven,

beholds his enemies, the heroes with whom he has contended, seated on thrones, and blazing with light. At this, the soul of the Emperor is mightily offended. Are the mere joys of the senses to be accepted by him, he argues, in effect, as any equivalent for the delight of good company? Where his comrades are, will be heaven for him: a place inhabited by the personages he sees before him, deserves a very different

name.

Yudhisthira, therefore is conducted to a region of another quality. Here, amidst horrors of darkness and anguish, his energy is exhausted, and he orders his guide angrily to lead him away. At this moment, sighing voices are heard in all directions, begging him to stay. With him, comes a moment of relief for all the souls imprisoned in this living pain, of sight and sound and touch.

Involuntarily the Emperor paused. And then, as he stood and listened, he realised, with dismay, that the voices to which he was listening were familiar. Here, in Hell, were his kinsmen and comrades. There, in Heaven, he had seen the great amongst his foes. Anger blazed up within him. Turning to the messenger, who had not yet left him, "Go!" he thundered, in his wrath, "Return to the high gods, whence thou camest, and make it known to them that never shall I look upon their face again. What! Evil men with them, and these my kinsfolk fallen into Hell! This is a crime! Never shall I return to them that wrought it. Here with my friends, in Hell, where my presence aids them, shall I abide for ever. Go!"

Swiftly the messenger departed, and Yudhisthira remained alone, with his head sunk on his breast, brooding in Hell on the fate of all he loved.

Only a moment passed, and suddenly the scene was changed. The sky above them became bright. Sweet airs began to blow. All that had been foul and repulsive disappeared. And Yudhisthira, looking up, found himself surrounded by the gods. "Well done!" they cried, "Thy trials are ended. Oh lord of men, thou hast fought and won. All kings must see hell as well as heaven. Happy are they who see it first. For thee, and these thy kin, nothing remains save happiness and glory. Then plunge thou here into the Heavenly Ganges,

and put away in it thy mortal enmity and grief. Here, in the Milky Way, put on the body of immortality, and then ascend thy throne. Be seated amongst the gods, great thou as Indra, alone amongst mortals raised to Heaven in this thine earthly form!"

That process of spiritualising which we have caught at its moment of inception in the story of Daksha and Siva, is here seen at its flowering-point. Thoroughly emancipated from the early worship of cosmic impressiveness and power, the Hero of the Sky appears no longer as a great Prajapati, or Lord of Creation, nor even as the Wild Huntsman slaying the winter sun, but entirely as a man, one of ourselves, only nobler. The Hindu imagination has now reached a point where it can conceive of nothing in the universe transcending in greatness man's conquest of himself. Yudhisthira shone amongst men, in royal clemency, and manly faithfulness and truth, even as now he shines amongst the stars. Whatever came to him, he first renounced, and finally accepted, on his own terms only. This was the demand that Buddhism, with its exaltation of character and detachment, had taught the Indian people to make of manly men. Greatest of all was the renunciation of the monk, but next to this, and a different expression of the same greatness, was the acceptance of life and the world, as their master, not as their slave.

It cannot be denied that this story of Yudhisthira, with its subtlety of incident and of character-drawing, is thoroughly modern in tone and grasp. The particular

conception of loyalty which it embodies, is one that is deeply characteristic of the Indian people. To them, loyalty is a social, rather than a military or political virtue, and it is carried to great lengths. We must remember that this tale of Yudhisthira will be in part the offspring, and in part the parent, of that quality which it embodies and extols. Because this standard was characteristic of the nation it found expression in the epic. Because the epic has preached it in every village, in song and sermon and drama, these fifteen centuries past, it has moulded Indian character and institutions with increased momentum, and gone far to realise and democratise the form of nobility it praises. Would the Greek myths if left to develop freely, have passed eventually through the same process of ethicising and spiritualising as the Indian? Is India, in fact, to be regarded as the sole member of the circle of classical civilisations which has been given its normal and perfect growth? Or must we consider that the early emergence of the idea of beauty and conscious efforts after poetic effect supersedes in the Hellenic genius, all that becomes, in the Indian, high moral interpretation? A certain aroma of poetry there cannot fail to be, in productions that have engaged the noblest powers of man, but this in the Indian seems always to be unconscious, the result of beauty of thought and nobility of significance, while in the Greek we are keenly aware, of the desire of a supreme craftsman for beauty, as an end in itself.

people, that ye should be mine." By holiness is meant, not morality in the ordinary sense of the word, but the strict observance of ceremonial law. To steal or to lie is consistent with holiness but to eat forbidden food is not. While Christianity and Islam, in theory and to some extent in practice, admit the equality of mankind, the Jew and the Hindu claim to be by birth superior to other men. Neither religion sends out missionaries or seeks to make converts. Again, in both religions, festivals based on very primitive modes of thought, such as the Passover and Holi, have been retained down to our own times. Lastly, both religions, have sacred writings, to which they attribute an antiquity far beyond what critical scholarship can concede. A dispassionate, scientific study of the Jews should then be of some interest to Hindus. Such a study we have in Dr. Fishberg's book. Although thoroughly scientific in method, it is not too technical for the general reader. Above all, worthy of praise, is the matter-of-fact, unemotional tone Dr. Fishberg has maintained in writing on a subject which has aroused so many passions. From beginning to end there is an absence of all rhetoric. The book is a model of anthropological research and as such deserves attention even apart from the interest of the special question.

The Jews have always been supposed to be of the same race, as well as of the same religion. Unfortunately "race" is a

term

as ill-defined in anthropology as "species" in general biology. But at any rate, race must imply the possession of certain peculiar physical characteristics transmitted hereditarily. First of all, then, we must try to ascertain what is the physical type of the Jew. This is easy for the caricaturist in the comic papers, but the imagination of the caricaturist does not correspond with actual fact. Take the feature he fixes upon as distinctive, the nose. In caricature this is drawn hooked like the beak of a parrot. As a matter of fact, such a nose is uncommon among Jews. Among 2,836 adult male Jews Dr. Fishberg found only 14 per cent. had hooked noses and even smaller among 1,284 Jewesses an proportion, only 13 per cent. Besides this form of nose is not peculiar to Jews. It is found among Russians, Poles, Bavarians,

"Considering on the one hand that only one Jew in six has an aquiline or hook nose, and on the other, that so many races in various parts of the world have just as many and often more persons with this kind of nose, there is hardly any justification for speaking of a "Jewish" or "Semitic nose."*

This is all true for the form of the head. "There is no single type of head which is found among the Jews in all countries in which they live." Dr. Fishberg gives three polygons of frequency for the cephalic indices of the Jews in Tunis, in the Caucasus and in Lithuania respectively. As far as we can tell from simple inspection these may conform to Gauss' law, but it would require fuller details and elaborate calculations to ascertain whether they do or not. It is clear, however, that the Jews in Tunis are dolichocephalic and the Jews in the Caucasus brachicephalic. The important point is that the form of head found among the Jews corresponds to that of the people by whom they are surrounded. In Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Jews and non-Jews are longheaded, while in Russia and Poland they are broad-headed. Even slight variations shew the same correspondence.

"The Russian Poles have an average cephalic index of 82.13 and those of Galicia, 84'4. The Jews of these two parts of ancient Poland also shew the same differences; their average cephalic index is in Russian Poland 8191 and in Austrian Poland (Galicia) 83.33. On the whole the slight differences which are to be observed between the Jews and non-Jews in these countries may be ascribed to the usual and practically unavoidable errors of observation and calculation."§

There is then no more a Jewish than a Roman Catholic or Protestant head-form.

Some writers, both among friends and enemies, have attributed a superiority in brain to the Jews. Very few observations of the weight of Jewish brains have been reported. These few shew a ratio of brain weight to stature rather less for Jews than for other people, but the number of observations in too small for any conclusion to be drawn. The assertion of superiority is based on no evidence.

In stature the Jews of Eastern Europe are generally shorter than the surrounding population. But they live in extreme poverty and are for the most part dwellers in towns. Now in all countries the height of the urban

* P. 83.

population falls below the general standard, and again height has been shewn to depend in part on nourishment and exercise. The rich Jews of the West End of London are as tall as the average Englishman. When the Jews of Eastern Europe leave their homes for America and live under better economic conditions their height increases.

"The author has found that the average stature of 1,404 immigrants in New York City was 164-2 centimetres, while their children, the first generation of descendants of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, measured 167.9 cm. in height, an increase of 37 cm. in height in one generation."*

When Jews in different countries are compared it is found that, as for cephalic index, "The stature of the Jews varies with the stature of the non-Jewish population among which they live."

In popular estimation, races are generally distinguished by the colour of the skin, hair and eyes. The Jews differ widely from one another in this respect, On the Malabar coast there are the so-called "black Jews" with a skin as dark as that of their Hindu neighbours. The Jews of Europe are counted among the "white races," but they may be either blonde or brunette in complexion. While the majority is always brunette the percentage of blondes varies in different countries. In England over forty per cent. have blue eyes and over twenty-five per cent. fair hair, but in Italy the corresponding rates are thirty and five per cent. Some anthropologists have thought that both types existed among the Jews before the dispersion. This supposition Dr. Fishberg rejects on the ground that blonde Jews are only found where a part of the surrounding population is blonde.

a

We see then that it is not possible to define the Jewish race either by the nose, or the shape of the head, or the stature or the complexion. But some writers have asserted that there is a peculiar Jewish physiognomy which can easily be distinguished even if it cannot be described. But as matter of fact Jews who habitually live in the society of Christians cannot always be distinguished from them. In Western Europe they often mix freely with the people around them without any one knowing or caring about their religion. Zangwill in his novel "The Children of the Ghetto" tells an anecdote of a Christian artist who first * P..

discovered that a family he had known for four years was Jewish when he asked permission to marry one of the daughters. But the clearest proof that there is no specially Jewish physiognomy is supplied by the photographs Dr. Fishberg gives. From these we see that the Chinese Jews have the slanting eyes and flattened nose of the Mongolian, that the Jews in Germany may have the typically Teutonic fair hair and skin, and that Jews in India are exactly like Hindus.

In

Still Dr. Fishberg admits that in Eastern Europe and certain oriental countries the Jews can generally be distinguished round the surrounding population, but he disputes the inference that they are distinguished because of certain racial characters. many cases the explanation is very simple. The Jew often has a peculiar dress or a peculiar method of dressing the hair. When these are abandoned it is not always easy to recognize him. Dr. Fishberg found he could point out nearly every Jew in the smaller towns in Poland, Russia, but often failed with Jewish immigrants from these countries in New York City. But there are cases to which this explanation does not apply.

"In these careful study reveals that it is not the body which marks the Jew; it is his soul. In other words the type is not anthropological or physical, it is social or psychic Centuries of confinement in the Ghetto, social ostracism, ceaseless suffering under the in producing a characteristic psychic type."'+ ban of abuse and persecution have been instrumental

Long ago some unknown Jew wrote of

This was true of the Jews in all countries till recent times and is even now true in Eastern Europe. Habitual suffering leaves an impress on the features which a happier life cannot at once remove. The Jews who have emigrated to free-er countries may perhaps never lose this impress themselves, but their descendants will.

"The peculiar Jewish expression disappears in Jews who have been out of the Ghetto for a few generations."

The characteristic Ghetto face is then not racial, since it is not transmitted by heredity. It is worthwhile to insist on this point since the failure to distinguish between + P. 165.