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This will be an extremely valuable book to anyone concerned with the psychology of the peoples of India. It offers an orderly survey of a great mass of detailed customs and beliefs, hitherto unrecorded and now collected at first-hand. There is a minimum of theorizing, the chief object being to record as many customs as possible 'before it is too late', and to attempt to shew how far the concept of a supernatural cosmic power dominates popular practice. The author claims to voice no explanation, no matter how controversial it may seem, which does not faithfully represent local belief.
Such a wide and dispassionate record is urgently called for, since only too many of those local customs and beliefs which are unprotected by priestly prestige are disappearing swiftly before the disruptive force of modernism. The ritual of agriculture especially is changing fast, the author himself having witnessed customs in the Deccan which are now preserved only by the elder generation, and derided and discarded by the younger members of the community. Such a loss of the older pre-animistic culture necessarily throws animistic rites into undue prominence as a basis for theoretical studies.