In accordance with tradition, it now becomes my duty to perform a time honored rite—to inflict on you the Presidential Address. I will try to do this as painlessly and as quickly as my own inadequacies will permit, but before settling down to the excruciating details I would like, in all seriousness, to throw out a suggestion to this Association, although other learned societies are welcome to it because I have no intention of seeking a patent; namely, that die Presidential Address be given either by the vice-president who becomes president at this meeting or by the rearing president at the next annual meeting. This procedure will permit the president to devote his undivided attention to the business of the Association while he is president and give the writer an opportunity to prepare his talk when he is not completely up to his ears in other Association activities. It should produce better Presidential Addresses, and should prolong the lives of ex-presidents by at least five years.

The common occurrence of cults of the dead in Neolithic and early Bronze Age societies around the world raises at least one major question about early Chinese religion: what factors account for the elaboration of ancestor worship in China and for the degree to which—compared to its role in other cultures—it endured? The study of Chinese religion in the Neolithic and Shang periods (ca. 4000–1050 B.C.E.) can contribute to our understanding of such matters, but the bulk of recent scholarship is inevitably and properly focused on technical analyses of sites, artifacts, rituals, and spiritual Powers. Many studies address problems of definition, such as the nature of Ti, the high god of the Shang, and his cult (Akatsuka 1977:471–537; Ikeda 1981:25–39; Eno 1990); images of T'ien (Heaven, Sky) (Hayashi 1989a); the nature of the Earth Power and its associated altar of the soil (Tai Chia-hsiang 1986); the role of sun, bird, and other totems in Neolithic and Shang belief (Hu Hou-hsüan 1977; Allan 1981; Tu Chin-p'eng 1992; Wu Hung 1985; Paper 1986; Ch'ien Chihch'iang 1988; Juyü 1991; Wang Chi-huai 1992; Xiong Chuanxin 1992; Chang Teshui 1993; Chang Wen 1994; Wang Lu-ch'ang 1994); methods and objects of sacrifice (Ikeda 1980; Ch'iu Hsi-kuei 1985; Childs-Johnson 1987; Lien Shao-ming 1989; Itō 1990; Hao Pen-hsing 1992); the religious dimensions of illness (Takashima 1980) and of settlement building (Akatsuka 1977:494–99).

The New Year Ceremony at Basak (South Laos) by Charles Archaimbault, which is the subject of this review article, provides a superb illustration of the way in which ritual and mythical symbols express historical alterations in social structure and social experience. While there has been continuity in the symbols of the New Year ceremony, the ritual context which invests these symbols with meaning has changed. This change reflects the diminution of the power of the putative ruler of Campasak who plays the crucial role in the ceremony.