The religion and mythology of many peoples have a specific pair of deities who originally belonged to two separate peoples or tribes, but who became related to each other as siblings. The author takes up Osiris and Set in the Egyptian mythology, Odin and Loki in the Nordic, and Apollon-Artemis and Zeus-Poseidon in the Greek. He finds that : (1) All these sibling-deities are a product of the contact, struggle and fusion between two different peoples. (2) The ethno-historical conditions which have produced these sibling relations are diverse. (3) Nevertheless, the religious policy of the dominant people towards the conquered and the fear of the magical power of strangers, on the one hand, and the hatred and resistance of the conquered against the dominant people, on the other hand, generally result in producing the following characteristics of one of the sibling-deities, i. e. the god of the vanquished people who has entered into partnership with the god of the conquering people : (a) Dual personality, being the principle of the good as well as the principle of the evil. (b) Incessant aggressiveness and resistance against the partner-god without any justifiable reason. In the second part, the author analyses the problem of the goddess Amaterasu and her younger brother Susano-o-no-mikoto in the classical myth of Japan. He makes clear that these sibling-deities were originally two independent beings who had no blood-relationship to each other-a powerful goddess of the "Takama-ga-hara people" and a great god of the "Izumo people". On the basis of a comparative study in many characteristic phenomena common to some sibling-deities, he assumes that : (1) The hitherto prevalent view that Susano-o-no-mikoto was a storm-god, as he kept crying and created a commotion, is inadequate. "Crying and commotion" was an ancient magico-religious act to invoke kami. (2) The god was primarily one of the Izumo deities presiding over rain and agriculture. Therefore the myth of his ravaging rice-fields of Takama-ga-hara is not the manifestation of his storm-god character, as is usually believed, but one of the attempts on the side of the "Takama-ga-hara people" to change him into an evil being, utilizing his function as rain-maker and agricultural god. (3) The myth of the "weaver-girl of heavenly cloths" being wounded to death by the violent act of Susano-o-no-mikoto might have been an euphemistic modification of the original form in which Amaterasu herself was wounded to death.

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The author replies to (I) S. Izumi's comment in the book review section of the present journal, Vol.14, No.3, on his "Clan-Exogamy in Eastern Asia" in Problems of Contemporary Sociology : Studies Presented to Dr. Teizo Toda on His 60th Birthday and (II) Y. Shiratori's comment in his paper, "On the Tribes of Nan-chao and Ta-li and the Language of their Descendants, the Minkia" (The Japanese Journal of Ethnology, Vol.15, Nos.3-4), on the author's "The Languages of the Nan-chao, Ta-li, and Min-kia" (JJE, Vol.14, No.2). I : (1) Izumi doubts the possibility that clan-exogamy should have been called into being through the influence of scholarship as, for example, Chu-tzu. The author replies that such a change can be demonstrated historically in Korea and Annam. (2) Izumi doubts the utility of old Chinese documents as ethnological materials. The author replies that they must, indeed, be treated with abundant discretion, but that their positive, systematic use is indispensable and can contribute much to ethnographies of Eastern Asia. (3) Izumi comments that the clan-exogamy and the bifurcation (distinction between paternal and maternal relatives) in kinship terminology are not always correlative. The author accepts this comment with thanks, but he also points out the fact that in Korea the bifurcation in kinship terminology came into existence together with the establishment of clan-exogamy as an important example for ethnologists. II : (1) Shiratori objects to the author's view that the Minkia language is the modern survival of the language of the people who constituted the core of the kingdoms of Nan-chao and Ta-li, and asserts that, since Nan-chao was a kingdom of the Lolo and the Minkia are the descendants of a Tai people conquered by the Lolo, the Minkia language is intimately related to the Tai language. The author examines the evidential data as presented by Shiratori, and argues against their acceptability. (2) The author modifies, in the present paper, his former argument that Minkia constitutes an independent language close to Lolo. The author feels that, until research has progressed further, Minkia should be treated as an independent group, and its affiliation to Lolo, Mon-Khmer or Chinese is still uncertain.

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In ancient China there existed the idea that people should marry at a definite age. The question whether the principle was actually put into practice or not seems to the author to be of great significance in clarifying the form and character of rural societies and religions in antiquity, as well as the nature of Chinese classics in which the principle is enunciated, In the Chou-li (Mei-shih), Li-chi (Nei-tse, Ch'u-li), Ch'un-ch'iu Ku-liang-chuan (12th year of Wen-kung), etc., the rule is stated that males should marry at the age of 30 and females at the age of 20. While this rule is generally reiterated in later works, we find in the Mo-tzu (Chieh-yung-p'ien) another tradition of the nuptial age of 20 for males and 15 for females. It is also said that in the Ch'un-ch'iu period the prince Huan-kung of Ch'i ordered males to marry at the age of 20 and females at the age of 15 (Han-fei-tzu), and Chu-chien, king of Yueh, in order to increase the population of his kingdom, punished parents if their sons were not married at the age of 20, and their daughters at the age of 17. A controversy thereafter developed over these conflicting rules. The age of puberty, however, according to the Su-wen, etc., was set in ancient China at 16 for boys and 14 for girls. Also the age at which Emperor Shun, King Wen, Confucius, etc., are said to have been married, as well as the age of marriage which was customary under the Han dynasty, contradicts the above-mentioed principles cited in the Chou-li and other sources. The reason that this idea of a definite nuptial age came into being is sought by the author in the institution of mei 媒 (match-maker). As early as in the Shih-ching, Meng-tzu, and Li-chi (Ch'u-li), we find the word mei, used for the custom which was prevalent in the Ch'un-ch'iu and Chan-kuo periods. In those days the mei seems to have meant not an offical, nor even a professioal, match-maker, but any person who peformed the function of go-between even temporarily. It was most likely because of the enthusiasm of later Confucianist scholars who attempted to reconstruct their idealized political system of the early Chou dynasty, that in the Chou-li the mei was discussed as a government official. A clue to the origin of this imaginary official, the author finds in the chang-mei 掌媒 (arranger of match-making), as seen in the Kuan-tzu (Ju-kuo-p'ien). The chang-mei was also an ideal institution which was supposed to take care of widowers and widows and marry them to each other. This institution must have extended its function in Confucian ideology, finally to control every detail of marriage and birth. Hence the principle of a definite age of marriage, side by side with that of a definite season for marriage. In pursuing these questions, the author criticized M. Granet's method of reconstructing the ancient religious life of China in the Fetes et chansons anciennes de la Chine, and presents his own method of dealing with Chinese classics for ethno-historical studies.

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The Yaphetic theory of N. Marr and his followers had been propagated during last twenty years as the genuine Marxist theory of language. In June 1950, Stalin published his famous article, "On Marxism in Linguistics, " and gave Marr's theory a decisive blow. Being no linguist, he had to rely on critics of Marr, principally Prof. Chikobava at Tiflis University. Although his criticism created a sensation in the USSR, we can find little other than propositions usually found in text-books of comparative linguistics. In recent years the Yaphetic theory has met the strong opposition of the Moscow linguists headed by Academician Vinogradov. This opposition was based on traditional, i. e. comparative-historical linguistics. After Stalin's criticism, the Institute of Language and Thought, the citadel of Yaphetic theory, was dissolved, and in July 1950, a new Institute of Linguistics was established. Vinogradov, who had been accused by Marrists of being "reactionary, " was elected director. A review of the work of this new Institute in the last months indicates clearly that the currently-prevalent trend in Soviet linguistics is based on the comparative-historical method. The present day Soviet linguists emphasize historicism.

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