PRE-BUDDHIST CULTURE

Evening Star, Issue 23122, 23 November 1938, Page 7

PRE-BUDDHIST CULTURE

DISCOVERED IN INDD-GHINA After two years of studies among peoples no Western scientist has ever visited before, a young Swedish ethnologist, Dr Karl Gustaf Izikowitz, has just returned to Stockholm from the border territories of French IndoChina, China, and Burma. The purpose of these researches, which were facilitated by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and from Sweden, was pri-

niarily sociological, but the expedition has also resulted in the Ethnological Museum at Stockholm receiving a collection of materials from a part of the world which as hitherto been represented in no European museum. Dt Izikowitz has obtained this material principally from two peoples, the La met and the Akha, who have a rather primitive and poor culture, but who are of special interest because they possess certain characteristics from pre-Buddhist Chinese culture. For instance, this Swedish explorer was present at a feast of a typo which is described in ancient Chinese records, but which has long since disappeared from China, and ho has taken home a number of triangular balls which, ac-

cording to a special ritual, are thrown backwards and forwards at such feasts between young men and women. Dr Izikowitz also found that these IndoChinese play football with high-boune- , ing balls made of cane, which . they kick with their knees, and that they hold drinking competitions with fermented rice between teams of men and women, the latter usually being the victors.