The Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal.
Edward Tuite Dalton (C.S.I).

While documenting lives can be said to be a human tendency with ancient geographers, ambassadors and even literate kings leaving behind records of foreign places, people and sometimes too fantastical accounts to be believed in modern times. Using the technique with deliberate intent to record a people ignored for centuries can perhaps be said to have started with the Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal: A scientific book of rare photos and writing that despite its limited scale of documentation successfully captured the last phase of the primitive tribes of Chota Nagpur and Assam, just before modernization begun to change their lives.

The product of an age when unraveling history and advancing sciences was coursing with momentum through the sub continent of British India. Pushed not by the dedicated students of those disciplines but rather a handful of enthusiastic and determined civil servants and soldiers. Burning the midnight oil in leisure hours or as duties permitted them a leave of absence to enrich human knowledge and understanding at the behest of the government they served or simply as literary hobbies. The book had erupted out of a tiny corner of the eighteenth century, silent and unadvertised, yet in every sense, the very first comprehensive endeavor to chronicle a subject that had never been attempted by any empire or dynasty in the 5,000 year timeline that preceded its publication.

Generally considered to have contributed significantly to the growth of anthropology in India and in somewhat eroding the inhuman concept of displaying people with live exhibitions in favour of the photographic medium that in present times has come to serve as the primary means of recording the life and times of people and places. The making of the book was largely made possible by the involvement of the Asiatic Society of Bengal: An institution of learned men of curiosity and scholarly dispositions. Founded almost a century ago in the winter of 1748 by Sir William Jones. A scholar, lawyer, orientalist and Supreme Court Justice with a passionate interest in the Hindu culture, the language of Sanskrit and researching the ancient life of the orient – with his legacy, now located in Park Street, Kolkatta, harbouring a colossal collection of old books, paintings, photographs and engravings of which the Sanskrit selection amount to over 27,000 manuscripts.

Originally intended to be catalog for a scientific exhibition proposed by Sir Joseph Fayrer. A medical surgeon and the president of the Asiatic Society in 1867. The illustrated literature had emerged as a replacement for the grand event that inspite its unanimous approval for displaying the primitive tribes of India for scientific study in the city of Calcutta in 1869 had ultimately been scraped on humanitarian grounds, and the effort of transforming the exhibition into a book left on the desk of Irish commissioner Edward Tuite Dalton: A solider and political agent whose sole credential for being allotted the privilege of compiling India’s first work on ethnology had been a long career spend amidst the primitive tribes of Assam and Chota Nagpur.

While gathering, processing and writing out a full fledged book can be a daunting task for even a seasoned author and one without much skepticism can assume Edward’s burden indeed would have been a great one, as he was neither a trained student of anthropology, an author or an experienced compiler. Yet the Irish commissioner who as a child had hailed from a family of creative talent seems to risen to the occasion, like in every other known situation that had been thrust upon him, since he had arrived in British India in 1835.

Recommend by Sir Ashley Eden. A prominent member of the Asiatic Society and the first civilian Governor General of Bhutan. Edward, not faltering in the trust placed in him by the literary society, had spend the next four years processing, compiling and editing enormous tons of data. Relying not just on his memories and previous contributions made in publications (as he had by this time lost his notes during the mutiny of 1857) but also copious amount of material supplied to him by the Bengal Secretariat, district officials and numerous other journals produced on the subject.

Not wanting to just provide a basic description of the tribes, their habits and customs. He had resorted to using the techniques of an author and sprucing his work with form, structure, narrative, a beginning and an end, had nestled it inside the larger frame of the prevailing Aryan and Dravidian theory. Then taking a momentary breather, further shaped its contours with his own opinions and hypothesis. Much of which later was to serve as seeds to further investigate and expound research in those areas or wholeheartedly supported by more serious anthropologists and historians – with one of the book’s binding thought, still continuing to be the accepted theory: The plains of the subcontinent of India had been peopled by migrants hailing from the far North East and other races, way before the coming of the Aryans (see Farbound.Net snippet: Behind the myth of the serpent people).

Working in methodological order from his residency in Ranchi, Jharkhand and sending each completed section to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, Edward by end of 1869-70 had produced what one finds the Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal to be today: A comprehensive account of the tribes of Assam and Chota Nagpur, described with nearly 350 pages and 37 lithographs created from a series of original black and white photographs, provided for by Messers T.F., Tosco Peppe, Dr. Brown, the political agent of Manipur, and importantly, Dr. Benjamin Simpson – pioneering photographers of British India who inspite lacking the sophisticated equipment to make photos in startling colors and high resolution as does their modern day descendants, had trudged through wild forests and inhospitable landscapes with their hefty and cumbersome daguerreotype box cameras to capture images of a people, the world at never seen before nor knew they ever existed.

Ultimately published in 1872 with an additional grant of Rs. 10,000 extend by the Government of Bengal to cover unpredicted expenses that had cropped up over the use of illustrations, photographs and printing. The book, that had taken almost six years to complete since the abandonment of the scientific exhibition, was finally unveiled to the world to be both criticized and hailed as a work of caliber by generations of men and women.

Who right up the present day, have ploughed though its descriptive passages and rare photos with profound interest. Applauded and cheered it in scientific seminars. Disapproved its theories and description as a conspiracy of the erstwhile British rule. Or turned it into the topic of controversy. With perhaps Tosco Peppe’s photo of two naked Juan girls, bodies touching and clad in nothing more than leaves and beads of necklaces, gaining the most notoriety as the symbol of a supposed colonial fantasy – that even now continues to be a topic of debate.

However, of all the book’s critics that cropped up over the years, perhaps the most widely recognized has remained Herbert Risely: A British ethnographer and civil servant who had  appeared on the scene some years after to broaden the horizons of ethnology with his own research in the field. Later elected as Director of Ethnography and the civil servant responsible for formally applying the cast system in British India. Herbet while an apparent admirer had none the less found the work to be limited for a comprehensive ethnological account and by 1885 had subsequently incorporated its content into his larger publication on the tribes of India – rejecting some of its hypothesis and updating alterations in the habits and garbs of the primitive tribes that had already begun to appear since Edward’s observations.

Yet inspite, Herbert’s larger volume superseding its importance close to the beginning of the 19th century, emergence of contradicting theories and the natural process of change making some of its observations obsolete, the Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal by virtue of starting the trend is perhaps destined to remain on shelves, Invaluable for the information it contains as a first hand documentary account of ancient tribes of Assam and Chota Nagpur – as they had appeared at the time of its publication in the 18th century still cocooned in centuries old customs, habits and beliefs, untained by the influence of any external force or modernization. The hard labour of a handful of literary men whose drive for advancing ethnology and love for primitive tribes had gained the latter, nothing less than the world’s attention.