Religion and Art in Ashanti

SELIGMAN, BRENDA Z.

doi:10.1038/120396a0

Books Received
Published: 17 September 1927

Religion and Art in Ashanti

BRENDA Z. SELIGMAN

Nature volume 120, pages 396–397 (1927)Cite this article

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Abstract

WHEN a magnificent feast is given and the numerons dishes are all excellent, it is perhaps ungracious to complain that the disorder of the courses makes digestion somewhat difficult, and that the table decorations (the appendices), though interesting in themselves, have not been arranged so as to decorate the table. Yet the excellence of his material provokes this complaint against the arrangement of Capt. Rattray's book. It is somewhat disconcerting to find the ideas of the soul, disease, and medicine all discussed under “funeral rites.” So far as practical field method goes we would not change this at all; Capt. Rattray has derived all his knowledge from the sound method of watching ceremonies and discussing them with well-chosen informants, but it would have helped us to understand better had the ideas of the soul been given earlier, and not as an interruption to a ritual which had already begun. For an appreciation of Ashanti social, economic, and political organisation (as for most other ‘so-called’ savage societies) this knowledge of the spiritual background of life is essential, because religious ideas permeate everyday life and there is no trace of the division into civil and religious life that we are accustomed to in Europe. For example, law is founded on religious sanctions, just as the curious treatment of a new-born infant depends on the beliefs concerning the soul and the ever-powerful influence of the dead.

Religion and Art in Ashanti.

By Capt. R. S. Rattray. With chapters by G. T. Bennett, Vernon Blake, H. Dudley Buxton, R. R. Marett, C. G. Seligman. Pp. xviii + 414 + 116 plates. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1927.) 30s. net.