Humanities: Religion

HUMANITIES 443 books, however, for the differences in approach are significant.- Mr. Lynch's book is a rearranged collection of his news dispatches, with the intention simply of giving the reader "something of the taste of Red China and the feel of its people." He was impressed, surprised, bewildered , and saddened. He saw the factories, the demonstrations, the girls, and the communes, and most of all he saw the desperate, unremitting labour of the men, symbolized for him by the cargo rickshaws which appear at every turning of his tale. Mr. Duncan's book, on the other hand, moves frpm recording and reporting to a vigorous defence of "America's courageous policy of containment." My views are so far from his on this matter that a summary would inevitably be a parody; please read this book along with Mr. Lynch's, but keep the title in mind when t}:te conclusions come crunching in. (JoHN M. RoBSON) RELIGION High expectation is not to be recommended as a mood in which to approach a book on comparative religion .or the history of religions, at least when written by one man; it is too vulnerable to the disappointment which so often follows. The trouble usually stems from the unevenness of treatment; the author rarely has first-hand acquaintance with more than one of the religions on which he writes, and specialists in other areas, although content to recommend the book for its treatment of areas in which they themselves have no special competence, will have reservations about its value for the area they know best. The plain truth is that an adequate treatment of the various religions of mankind still requires a series of monographs by specialists in each and is something which can hardly be expected between the covers of one book. But to which of the scores of monographs should the enquiring general reader turn? To answer this question, and at the same time to provide that rare phenomenon of expert general introduction to many religions within the compass of one volume, .Charles J. Adams, Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University and editor of A Reader's Guide to the Great Religions (New York: The Free Press [Toronto: CollierMacmillan ], pp. xviii, 364, $11.00), has invited seven specialists to write bibliographical essays, on Primitive Religion (C. H. Long), The Religions 444 LEITERS IN CANADA: 1965 of China, excepting Buddhism (W. A. C. H. Dobson), Hinduism (N. J. Hein), Buddhism (R. A. Gard), The Religions of Japan (J. M. Kitagawa), Judaism (J. Goldin), and Christianity (H. H. Walsh). The chapter on Islam is written by the editor. There can be no doubt about the success of the venture. We have here a rich storehouse of information which meets a genuine need and which may be recommended to a serious reader providing a reliable general orientation and a point of departure for pursuing particular aspects of a religion further. The preface states that the authors have kept in mind the needs of librarians who might wish to build up an adequate collection on religion; a reader who had access to a library holding all the volumes mentioned here would indeed be very fortunate. An effort has been made to give the titles of works in English, but whenever adequate treatments are unavailable in English important works in the principal European languages have been listed. Untranslated works in oriental languages have been excluded. Several chapters are followed by an appendix that lists the main journals and works of reference in the field in question, and occasionally the addresses of oriental publishers have been given when these would be difficult to track down with standard bibliographical aids. The chapters differ in the extent to which the character of essay or bibliography is dominant. R. A. Card's chapter on Buddhism-much the longest in the book (almost 80 pages)-approaches an annotated bibliography, whereas J. Goldin's chapter could better be described as a prolegomenon to the study of Judaism with special attention to the availability and nature of the sources. Some of the chapters seem to have been prepared several years ago and their bibliographical information is not entirely...