Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande by E. E. Evans-PritchardReview by: M. F. Ashley-MontaguIsis, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 1938), p. 536Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225731 .

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536 isis, XXVIII, 2

will give an added impetus to the investigation of a profoundly important subject. There is a good bibliography and an index.

New York University. M. F. ASHLEY-MONTAGU.

E. E. Evans-Pritchard. - Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. With a Foreword by C. G. SELIGMAN. Xxvi + 554 pag. New York: Oford University Press, 1937, ($ 7.50)

This is the best and most exhaustive account of witchcraft, oracles, and magic, as each of these qualities and practises function among a primitive people, that has thus far appeared in a field where there are many admirable studies on the same subjects. We may echo the opening words of Professor SELIGMAN's Foreword, "Dr. EVANS-PRITCHARD

has given us good measure, pressed down and running over." The Azande, among whom the author during several expeditions

spent a total of twenty months, are a negroid people living in the Southern Sudan on the Nile-Congo divide. Since 1905 they have been subject to Anglo-Egyptian rule and now live under the Sudan Administration. These relations between the Government and the Azande have proved of great advantage to the author, and he has made the most of them. Throughout the work Dr. EvANs-PRITCHARD keeps completely to the report and explanation of the observations which he made among the Azande, and never for a moment does he enter into theoretical discussions of his data, or bring in examples from other cultures to assist the inter- pretation of his own observations among the Azande. The result is a repository of facts of the greatest interest and of abiding value to the student of human thought, whether primitive or otherwise.

The present volume is strictly limited to the presentation of the ma- terial relating to the subjects designated on its title-page; in further volumes Dr. EVANS-PRITCHARD promises to give us a complete account of Zande culture. In the present volume he provides the reader with a brief outline of Zande culture which is really quite adequate for an understanding of what follows. It is impossible to conceive of any future general discussion of witchcraft, magic, and oracles which will not be obliged to draw heavily upon Dr. EvANS-PRITCHARD's book. The book is very attractively written, and not alone the anthropologist, but anyone desirous of gaining some insight into the actual operation of human thought will benefit greatly from a reading of this excellent volume.

New York University. M. F. ASHLEY-MONTAGU

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