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proper to examine the original expression from the Rgveda (X. 14.8 punar astam ehi....tanv8 Suvarcah) which indieates ‘return to the house with a new body’. The author has confined himself - and he has specifically mentioned it - to thoroughly written sources and has totaliy left out tribal sources and partially documented but important sources even like ancient Egypt except for a stray rcference to Atum and R8 (p.27_t n.4). We do not find here the ideas of such people as the Maori or the cultured people like the Aztecs, though sizable information regarding them, their beliefs and rituals, has been available from early twenlicth century in published books. He menlions Eliade, Lfevi Strauss, Dumezil, Wikander and Duchcnse-Guilemin (p.26) in the sphere of “Comparalive Mylhology" in one linę and misses the conceptual dilference bctween a myth and Mylhology, or between myth and legend (cf. the expression “Creation Myths ”, but “the legend of the dismemberment of the giant Ymir ”, “Indian Legend of Fish" etc., p.51,60,67), though the difference has been madę by scholars during the many decades prior to the present book. Starting with the proposition thaf myth and philosophy are closely related, the next natural step is a commenl on the status of myth in philosophical speculation. In this context one could say that a myth represenls the stage of proto-philosophy. Hencc, the germ of philosophical thought does not start, as the author notes, from the dismemberment of the primordial man (PurusĄ paralleis of which obtain in many lands, as the author has exemplificd. Actually, the start should be from the very Scparalion of Heaven and Earth, a myth that obtains in the Veda and widely, but is untouched in the present study. So, “when Yin and Yang were not dividcd“ (p.59), they rellect the proto-philosophical stage of the parents being in constant cmbrace to be divided by some god, their son (Maori Tanę, Greek Cronos, Vedic Indra and other gods and so on), the philosophical stage being the concept of the brahm&nda (the cosmic

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Though the materia! used is massive and the efforts impressive, at places independent judgement and alertness to chronology appears wanting. Thus, when Prof. .Nakamura compares the chuming of the ocean by Izanagi and Izanami (the primcval pair) with the Hindu Manu-Fish myth while dealing with creation, he starls from the Matsya Purina, goes on to the Agni Purina and cornes back to the Satapatha Brihmana, never menlioning the Mahibhirala (AdiparvanJ in this particular context (of churning), obviously as he fixed attention on the ‘lance’ of Izanagi and the ‘hom’ of the fish (p.60). But, while in the Japancse myth the lance is used for churning the ocean to create land, the hom of the fish is ncvcr so used in the Hindu myth. Hence, the comparison is olT the mark. The better way would have been to refer to the churning myth proper with the mount.ain Mandara. One fails to understand why Nakamura goes to the Garuda-Purina lor the tortoise incamation in the chuming myth, leaving the Mahibhirala (Adi.). And the tortoise does not himself rotate the mountain as he says. Il is done by the gods and