Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1925. — 448 pp."The ancient religion of Armenia was derived from three main sources: National, Iranian, and Asianic. The Asianic element, including the Semitic, does not seem to have extended beyond the objectionable but widely spread rites of a mother goddess. The National element came from Eastern Europe and must have had a common origin with the Iranian. But it, no doubt, represents an earlier stage of development than the Vedas and the Avesta. It is for the well-informed scholar of Indo-European religion to pronounce a judgement as to the value of the material brought together in this study. The lexical, folk-loristic, and literary heritage of the Armenians has much yet to disclose. No one can be more painfully conscious than the author of the defects of this work. He had to combine research with popular and connected exposition, a task far above his ability. The ancient material was not so scanty as broken. So analogy, wherever it could be found within the family, was called upon to restore the natural connections.""There may perhaps be an impression in the minds of most readers that Africa, with its practically unwritten languages and comparatively undeveloped religious ideas, can have little or nothing which can properly be described as mythology, or at any rate that the existing material is too scanty to justify a volume on the subject.
I must confess that, until I actually undertook the work, I had no conception of the enormous amount of material that is in fact available a great deal of it in German periodicals not always readily accessible. The limitations of time, space, and human faculties have prevented my making full use of these materials: I can only hope to supply clues which other investigators may follow up if I cannot do so."
