Book Reviews 533 world religion, which has had to adapt to many local contexts, and any view of it that depends too closely on one locality’s reaction to it is bound to be limited.

Such personal quibbles, so briefly noted, should not detract, however, from the view that Burmese Supernaturalism is a work that no student of South East Asian anthropology should be without.

Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art. ANDREAS LOMMEL. Michael Bullock, trans. New York & Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967. 175 pp., 52 illustrations ( 1 frontispiece), 44 plates, notes, bibliog- raphy. $12.00 (cloth).

Reviewed by DOROTHY HAMMOND Brooklyn College

In both form and content this book should prove attractive to the general reader. Its format is admirable; the plates, many in color, are very handsome; numer- ous engaging drawings decorate the wide margins. The text presents an interesting topic enlivened with vivid accounts of sha- manism selected from an extensive bibliog- raphy and the author’s own fieldwork.

Lommel is engaged here in a formidable task: determining the psychological signifi- cance of shamanism. establishing an integral relationship between shamanism and art, and illuminating the meaning of prehistoric art. In his discussion Lommel touches on a number of important issues. His contention, for example, that insufficient attention has been paid to the shaman as artist certainly merits serious consideration.

The exposition, however, is conveyed in blocks of short paragraphs in an assertive style obviating sustained or critical analysis. The argument is rather cavalierly advanced by statement, illustration, and reiteration. The general reader can proceed at a good pace, but the professional would find more value in fuller development.

The discussion of shamanism centers about the personality of the shaman. Lom- me1 assumes without question that the sha- man is always a psychopath who, being a man of superior intellect, has marshalled his talents to effect his own cure. The therapy consists of achieving control over the patho- genic forces by giving them symbolic forms

and organizing them into a harmonious order. In essence, this therapeutic process is artistic creativity, and its result, artistic pro- ductivity. Shamanistic rituals, especially the trances, replicate the cure, and the psychic health of the spectators is fostered through their participation in these reenactments.

The association of this psychodynamic se- quence with animistic beliefs, animal imag- ery, and concern for success in the hunt constitutes the elementary religion of hunt- ing people. This complex is the classic form of shamanism which, Lommel holds, origi- nated in Europe during the early Upper Pa- leolithic. He contends that much of the art of the period is shamanistic, perhaps even the work of the shaman. Shamanism subse- quently spread to the rest of the world; in the circumpolar regions it has been main- tained relatively intact by the Siberians and Eshimos and by hunting people elsewhere in more or less pure form. In more advanced cultures based on agriculture, a residual shamanism can be detected as elements or motifs in art and mythology.

The evidence for such a historical recon- struction is inevitably equivocal. It may be true that prehistoric art is shamanic in con- tent and that its iconography persists in con- temporary primitive arts. I t is perhaps pos- sible to identify Sedna with the Wauwelak sisters of Australia, or Odysseus with Kiviak, the Eskimo hero. But any assurance in such interpretations can only derive from presup- position. Lommel’s comments plainly indi- cate the tenuous nature of the evidence: ‘‘we have to know the world and ideas of sha- manism in order to see the shamanistic sig- nificance of the rock paintings” (p. 106). And again, “without a knowledge of the shamanistic stories and the shamans’ experi- ences, we should inevitably take the paint- ings for naturalistic portrayals from the ani- mal kingdom” (p. 128).

Lommel’s assumptions are those of nine- teenth-century comparative anthropology: shamanism is a coherent entity, any similar- ity to any of its elements indicates the pres- ence of the whole complex, if not at present, then in the past. His evolutionism is not en- tirely explicit, for the tone of his writing is contemporary. His equation of contempo- rary “primitives” with Palaeolithic men, however, and his generalizations about the

534 American Anthropologist [71, 19691

“primitive mind” as unstable, less rational, and the like convey a unilineal evolutionary point of view.

Lommel makes a number of cautious dis- claimers to certainty, but they are out- weighed by the brisk, assured sweep through time and space. The reading public that still seems to regard Frazer as the final anthro- pological authority in the field of religion will probably find Lommel’s thesis highly acceptable and comfortably in accord with its ethnocentric prejudgements about “civi- lized” and “primitive” men. Repetition of a cultural tradition, whether in ritual, in art, or, as in this case, in anthropology, serves to reinforce it. Lommel points out that “the shaman’s social function consists above all in bringing psychic calm and confidence to the tribal community by revitalizing and in- tensifying its notions of the world” (p. 12), but it is open to question whether this should be the function of the anthropologist.

The History of Religions: Essays on the Prob- lem of Understanding. JOSEPH M . KITA- GAWA, ed. With the collaboration of Mircea Eliade and Charles H. Long. Preface by Jerald C. Brauer. Essays in Divinity, Chi- cago & London: The University of Chi- cago Press, 1967. xii + 264 p ~ . , biograph- ical notes, index. $6.95 (cloth).

Reviewed by

Hunter College The present volume is the first in a series

of eight books to be published under the general title “Essays in Divinity.” The series results from the self-searching of modern theologians who have come to realize that they cannot fully understand their own reli- gious commitments unless they take cogni- zance of religions other than their own. In this sense, modern theologians have much in common with anthropologists, who also aim at an understanding of their own culture by examining others. History of Religions (also known as Comparative Religions or Reli- gionswissenschuft) is a discipline well suited to the broadening of horizons. With the par- allelism of purposes, the methods of both disciplines begin to converge. Joachim Wach marks the tenor of this book by explaining that the older theological dictum, “he who

ANNEMARIE DE WAAL MALEFIJT

knows one religion knows all,” is false. He also cautions against the mere collection of data; the study of religious phenomena must be comparative and lead to understanding. Such understanding will be possible only if the history of religions is inwardly con- nected with the history of cultures, Paul Til- lich also calls for interpretation of religions within the framework of their own cultural situations, and he does not exclude Chris- tianity from such scrutiny. Religious sym- bols everywhere have their roots in the total- ity of human experience, and they reflect the ways in which men have understood themselves in their very nature. Mircea El- iade applies these general principles by ex- amining a number of contemporary cultural fashions. In his view, the wide acceptance of Freud’s Totem and Taboo signifies, among other things, a general dissatisfaction with the worn-out forms of traditional Christian- ity. In the same vein, he analyzes the popu- larity of the writings of Teilhard de Chardin and of LBvi-Strauss as a protest against the nihilism of Sartre’s existentialism.

In other essays, Joseph M. Kitagawa at- tempts a typology of religions; Kees W. Bolle considers the relationships between Christian theology and non-Christian reli- gions; and Thomas J. J. Altizer, himself a proponent of the “God-is-dead” movement, examines the social and historical circum- stances leading up to this philosophy. Charles H. Long takes up the difficult but crucial problem of interpretation of religious phenomena. He reviews and criticizes earlier anthropological theories, as well as explana- tions offered by phenomenologists, histo- rians, and philologists. Long justly calls for more explicit analysis of religious symbolism by synchronic and diachronic comparisons, but he seems unaware of modem anthropo- logical attempts in this direction. In fact, many other essays in this book convey the impression that anthropology has been mori- bund since Tylor and Frazer, although now being resurrected by LBvi-Strauss.

Acquaintance with anthropological field methods might have alleviated some of the difficulties experienced by Philip H. Ashby and Charles S. J. White. Both authors deal with Hinduism, and both made firsthand ob- servations, but problems of identification, participation, fieldwork ethics, data collect-