Reviews Of Diffeent Books

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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REVIEWS
shows that Hillebrandt has been active in many fields: Vedic studies, linguistics, Arthasästra, drama, Kālidāsa, Indian materialism and Buddhism. Das has been able to incorporate in this volume a large selection of his articles, omitting mainly those which were written for the general reader or which were already published in Alt-Indien (Breslau, 1899). Of his many reviews twenty have been reprinted, the most important certainly being his long review of Oldenberg's Metrische und textgeschichtliche Prolegomena (GGA 1889, pp. 387-424). Hillebrandt's detailed review of Telang's edition of the Mudrārākṣasa (ZDMG 39, 1885, pp. 107-132) was followed in 1912 by his edition of the Mudrārākṣasa and by several articles which are all reprinted in this volume. Also reprinted are his articles on Kautilya whose Arthaśāstra was discovered by Hillebrandt in 1908. Hillebrandt's parody of Pischel's Vedic studies: Die Götter des Rgveda, published under the pseudonym of Fritz Bonsens in 1894 is also included in it.
We must be very grateful to the editor of this volume for having added a list of corrigenda and indexes which are much more detailed than most indexes in this series: A. Sach- und Namensverzeichnis (pp. 631-645); B. Verzeichnis der Wörter, Stämme, Wurzeln, Formen (pp. 646-652); C. Verzeichnis der Textstellen (pp. 653-685). This volume is a fitting tribute to the memory of a great scholar.
Australian National University
J. W. DE JONG
Jaan Puhvel, Comparative mythology. Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. X, 302 pp. $32.95.
Indo-Iranian Journal 32: 1989.
The title of Puhvel's book is slightly misleading because this is not a study of the methods and aims of comparative mythology, but a study of IndoEuropean comparative mythology, a topic which for many decades was anathematized by scholars. In an introductory chapter Puhvel sketches the history of the study of myth and characterizes briefly four different approaches in the twentieth century, the ritualistic (Jane Harrison and others), the psychoanalytic, the sociological and the structuralist. He is critical of Lévi-Strauss: "Overlaying known data with binaristic gimmickry in the name of greater "understanding" is no substitute for a deeper probing of the records themselves as documents of a specific synchronic culture on the one hand and as outcomes of diachronic evolutionary processes on the other" (p. 19). Puhvel's own point of view is stated in the following words: