 Title page of the first volume of Castes and Tribes of Southern India | |
| Author | Edgar Thurston, K. Rangachari |
|---|---|
| Country | British India |
| Language | English |
| Genre | encyclopedia |
Publication date | 1909 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
Castes and Tribes of Southern India is a seven-volume encyclopedia of social groups of Madras Presidency and the princely states of Travancore, Mysore, Coorg and Pudukkottai published by British museologist Edgar Thurston and K. Rangachari in 1909.
The seven-volume work was one of several such publications resulting from the Ethnographic Survey of India project which was formally instituted by the Government of British India in 1901. The Survey was intended to record details of the manners, customs and physical features of Indian castes and tribes using in part the anthropometric methods that had first been used in India by Herbert Hope Risley for his own survey of the tribes and castes of Bengal. An eight-year period of funding was allotted for the purpose. [1]
The British government in India appointed a Superintendent of Ethnography for each province. [1] Thurston, who had been Superintendent of the Madras Government Museum since 1885, [2] had already conducted some ethnographic work in his studies of the hill tribes of Nilgiris District, published in 1894, and elsewhere. He was appointed Superintendent for Madras Presidency, while L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer and N. Subramania Iyer were respectively appointed Superintendents for the princely states of Cochin and Travancore.[ citation needed ] The reports for the two princely states were later integrated with Thurston's work to form the Castes and Tribes of Southern India,[ citation needed ] as were the results of Thurston's earlier researches into the hill tribes.[ citation needed ] The state of Mysore was allocated to Thurston for anthropometric survey but excluded for ethnographic survey.[ citation needed ] In his investigations in Madras Presidency, Thurston was assisted by K. Rangachari of the Government Museum.
Thurston investigated the characteristics of over 300 castes and tribes of South India, representing over 40 million people across an area of 150,000 square miles (390,000 km2). [2] He was a disciple of Risley, who believed in a racial theory for the basis of caste, and borrow anthropometric equipment from the Asiatic Society of Bengal, including a Lovibond Tintometer, to assist in his survey of Madras. Thurston had to overcome suspicions felt by his subjects during the conduct of the survey, and sometimes had to rely on his official position as a representative of the government in order to obtain the measurements that he needed. Some believed that Thurston had been sent on a mission to kill them in order then to display their stuffed bodies in the Madras museum, while others considered his measuring to be a prelude to their recruitment into the army or to kidnap them, and yet others thought that the equipment used to measure their height was a gallows. A consequence of these difficulties was that his sample size was often as low as 30 – 60 members of a caste or tribe, and sometimes as little as six or seven. [3]
Nature magazine, in its September 1910 issue, described the work as
a monumental record of the varied phases of south Indian tribal life, the traditions, manners and customs of people. Though in some respects it may be corrected or supplemented by future research it will long retain its value as an example of out-door investigation, and will remain a veritable mine of information, which will be of value. [2]
More recently, Crispin Bates has said that Thurston generally displayed "often lurid, orientalist imaginings" in his writings and has noted of the publications produced as a consequence of the Ethnographic Survey that
One of the most ludicrous was Thurston's study of southern India. Thurston was the curator of the government museum in Madras, and clearly saw the study of racial types among the Indians as an extension of his daily routine of labelling and pinning butterflies and of collecting and categorising the varieties of plants. [1]
The Kingdom of Travancore, also known as the Kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor, was an Indian kingdom from c. 1729 until 1949. It was ruled by the Travancore Royal Family from Padmanabhapuram, and later Thiruvananthapuram. At its zenith, the kingdom covered most of the south of modern-day Kerala and the southernmost part of modern-day Tamil Nadu with the Thachudaya Kaimal's enclave of Irinjalakuda Koodalmanikyam temple in the neighbouring Kingdom of Cochin. However Tangasseri area of Kollam city and Anchuthengu near Attingal in Thiruvananthapuram were parts of British India.
Jāti is the term traditionally used to describe a cohesive group of people in the Indian subcontinent, like a tribe, community, clan, sub-clan, or a religious sect. Each Jāti typically has an association with an occupation, geography or tribe. Different intrareligious beliefs or linguistic groupings may also define some Jātis. The term is often translated approximately in English as caste.
The Madras Presidency or Madras Province, officially called the Presidency of Fort St. George until 1937, was an administrative subdivision (province) of British India and later the Dominion of India. At its greatest extent, the presidency included most of southern India, including all of present-day Andhra Pradesh, almost all of Tamil Nadu and some parts of Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha and Telangana in the modern day. The city of Madras was the winter capital of the presidency and Ooty was the summer capital.
Dewan Bahadur Sachivottama SirChetput Pattabhiraman Ramaswami Iyer, popularly known as Sir C. P., was an Indian lawyer, administrator and politician who served as the Advocate-General of Madras Presidency from 1920 to 1923, Law member of the Executive council of the Governor of Madras from 1923 to 1928, Law member of the Executive Council of the Viceroy of India from 1931 to 1936 and the Diwan of Travancore from 1936 to 1947. Ramaswami Iyer was born in 1879 in Madras city and studied at Wesley College High School and Presidency College, Madras before qualifying as a lawyer from the Madras Law College. He practised as a lawyer in Madras and succeeded S. Srinivasa Iyengar as the Advocate-General of the Madras Presidency. He subsequently served as the Law member of the Governor of Madras and of the Viceroy of India before being appointed Diwan of Travancore in 1936.
Malabar District, also known as Malayalam District, was an administrative district on the southwestern Malabar Coast of Bombay Presidency (1792–1800), Madras Presidency (1800–1937), Madras Province (1937–1950) and finally, Madras State (1950–1956) in India. It was the most populous and the third-largest district in the erstwhile Madras State. The historic town of Calicut was the admisnitrative headquarters of this district.
The Billava Or Bhillava, Billoru, Biruveru people are an ethnic group of India. They are found traditionally in Tulu Nadu region and engaged in toddy tapping, cultivation and other activities. They have used both missionary education and Sri Narayana Guru's reform movement to upgrade themselves.
Naduvattam is a Panchayat town in The Nilgiris district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on Coimbatore-Gundalpet National Highway NH 67 of the Nilgiri Ghat Roads.
Sir Herbert Hope Risley was a British ethnographer and colonial administrator, a member of the Indian Civil Service who conducted extensive studies on the tribes and castes of the Bengal Presidency. He is notable for the formal application of the caste system to the entire Hindu population of British India in the 1901 census, of which he was in charge. As an exponent of scientific racism, he used anthropometric data to divide Indians into seven races.
Edgar Thurston was the British Superintendent at the Madras Government Museum from 1885 to 1908 who contributed to research studies in the fields of zoology, ethnology and botany of India, and later also published his works at the museum. Thurston was educated in medicine and lectured in anatomy at the Madras Medical College while simultaneously holding a senior position at the museum. His early works were on numismatics and geology, and these were later followed by researches in anthropology and ethnography. He succeeded Frederick S. Mullaly as the Superintendent of Ethnography for the Madras Presidency.
Diwan BahadurLakshminarayanapuram Krishna Ananthakrishna Iyer (1861–1937) was an anthropologist of British India. He is known for his work among the hill tribes of the western part of Madras province.
Sir Denzil Charles Jelf IbbetsonKCSI was an administrator in British India and an author. He served as Chief-Commissioner of the Central Provinces and Berar from 1898 to 1899 and Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab in 1907.
William Crooke was a British orientalist and a key figure in the study and documentation of Anglo-Indian folklore. He was born in County Cork, Ireland, and was educated at Erasmus Smith's Tipperary Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin.
Khan Bahadur Sir Muhammad Habibullah KCSI KCIE was an Indian politician and administrator who served as the Diwan of Travancore from 1934 to 1936.
Diwan Bahadur Kadambi Rangachari was an Indian botanist and ethnologist. He was an editor for the seven-volume work on south Indian ethnography along with Edgar Thurston. He also taught botany at the agricultural college in Coimbatore and wrote a textbook on botany.
The Kunchitigas are a community of people from Karnataka, India. They are mostly concentrated in the Tumkur, Bangalore, Mysore, Ramanagara, Shivamogga and Chitradurga districts. They are also found in Tamil Nadu.
The Ramoshi are an Indian aboriginal community found largely in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka. They are classified as a Scheduled Tribe by the government of India.
Robert Vane Russell was a British civil servant, known for his role as Superintendent of Ethnography for what was then the Central Provinces of British India, coordinating the production of publications detailing the peoples of the region. Russell served as Superintendent of Census Operations for the 1901 Census of India.
The People of India is a title that has been used for at least three books, all of which focussed primarily on ethnography.
The Mang, or Matang, community is an Indian caste mainly residing in the state of Maharashtra. Matang are known as Madiga "kommati" in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Reginald Edward Enthoven was an administrator in the Indian Civil Service of the British Raj and an author of publications related to India, including the three volumes entitled The Tribes and Castes of Bombay that formed a part of the Ethnographic Survey of India.
