THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, MARCH 7, 1925, p. 580 Among the Hindus Among The Brahmins and Pariahs.

By J. H. Sauter. Translated from the German by Bernard Miall. Boni & Liveright. 1924. $3. Reviewed by Charles A. Kofoid HERE are colorful and intimate glimpses into the daily life of the Hindu people as interpreted by one who though alien lived for many years among them and by transfusion became a blood brother of Arun the Brahmin. By even closer bonds he has linked himself to the intellectual and religious moods of this mystical, emotional, passionate people. The environmental contrasts of vast plain and mountain peak, of drouth and flood, of fountains, of fecundity and the plague, of sordid squalor and regal magnificence, are paralleled by the more striking antithesis of the sensualism of the temple life on the one hand and the purity and elevation of the religious teaching on the other. The author's experiences reveal the intenseness of the Hindu. It appears in the fakir who sits immobile in the temple court in the curses of the Kurumba, in the terror these imprecations inspire among the thieving outcasts, in the swami who immuremures himself for fifteen days, in the refinement of ablutions of Brahmin, in the ramifications of the blight of saste, in wifehood and widowhood; in fact, in every human relation. Judicial moderation and proportion are not pre-eminent Hindu qualities. The Indian temple must have a thousand pillars. The author seeks to create an Indian atmosphere. He does it by eliminating all externals of the customary Occidental interpretations of the Orient. His readers are brought at once without warning into the Brahmin home, into the Calcutta opium den, to the temple of celebration, into the cemetery of the plague-stricken village, into the school of the yogi, and into the gossip and lore of the Road. Since the days of Kim no writer has so widely opened the doors of India to Western eyes or so sympathetically shown us the Indian mind at work on the daily tasks and ageold problems of this intensely interesting people. The translator has carried over into English the graceful and forceful style of the original, a feat which adds much to the atmosphere of the work. Scientific criticism may find flaws in the observations and interpretations of the writer and even charge him with exaggeration or fakingbut these are phases of the author's artistry in creating this quite compelling representation of Indian life and characteristics. An important discovery was recently made at Columbia University. It is an unpublished portion of Sebastiano Serlio's manual of architecture published in the sixteenth century, and said to have great architectural and bibliographical interest, destined to affect the modem judgment of the French Renaissance.

Editorial Reviews Ever since the advent of British rule in India the inquisitive Europeans have been busy making deep study of the life of Indian people-their ancient past and also their present. Since India is as large as Europe minus Russia, they found it a land of endless variety of geography, climate, culture, religions, sprawling plains, arid deserts, dense forests, great rivers, lofty mountain ranges and above all a society boasting of the highest to the lowest stages of culture and which was at once the most affluent and at the same time swallowing in most abject poverty. Some belonged to the fairest of the human race and some dark no less than the Negroes of Africa. The present volume gives one of the most interesting and at the same time most realistic description of the Indian society as it existed in the opening decades of the twentieth century. The author, a German traveler, stayed in India for fifteen years in the course of which he traveled from the Malabar coast to the fields of the Himalayas and saw every part of the country, watching from close quarters the social life as led by the natives of India as well as by the white men, who ruled over them. As soon as the book appeared in German, it became most popular among European readers and was soon translated in several other European languages including its present translation in English. During his sojourn, the author observed the antiquity of Hinduism and its timeless existence. In his own words.. nations have come and gone, the sacrifices and the hymns to the Devas (gods) are even today offered up and sung as in the days of the great Gautama. In vain did the Muslim Moghuls with despotic cruelty strive to enslave the soul of Hinduism to their Crescent. Inspite of all, Brahminism has remained erect, unchanging through the changing ages, like a rock admits foaming breakets. And then follow most charming accounts such as of the 14 years old ravishing beauty Malka of the China towns redlight area of Calcutta where he was taken by the Police Inspector Macnaughten and to the underworld of opium dens of Chinese quarters. This is followed by the heart-rending life story of Brahmin ascetic Sita Bai whom he found singing on her instrument. She became a widow at the age of 12, an orphan at the age of 17 when she lost her entire family in a devastating famine. The most delectable account in the book is that in which he describes his memories of malabar, the Pearl of India, nestling in its marvelous garland of palam trees, the wild and rugged Ghats climbing steeply to the table land of India and the life story of the Brahman boy Kumaran who became a Christian Convert and lived to serve the lepers in whose colony he made his permanent home against the stiff opposition of his parents and where he ultimately got infected by the fatal disease and died a noble death in the service of the lepers.