ANTHROPOMETRY IN INDIA. 



GREAT as are, and have been, the opportunities for 

 anthropological research afforded by our Indian 

 Empire, it can hardly be said that they have been utilised 

 to anything like the extent that might have been the case. 

 It is needless to dwell on the causes of this defect ; they are 

 numerous but sufficiently clear ; and the parsimony of the 

 Indian Government in matters relating to science is pro- 

 minent among them. 1 But neither zeal nor industry have 

 been awanting in European officials acting in their private 

 capacity, and vast masses of ethnological material have 

 been collected by them ; the department of physical anthro- 

 pology has, however, been comparatively neglected, and 

 what has been done therein up to a recent date has not 

 been done systematically. Thus, for example, Dr. John 

 Shortt, on the inspiration of Dr. Barnard Davis, so long 

 ago as 1868, published a long series of measurements of 

 the several tribes of the Neilgherry Mountains, and of 

 certain castes in the plain of the Carnatic ; but he omitted 

 to ascertain the length and breadth of the head ; and his 

 observations, though valuable, are much less so than they 

 might have been. 



Here, as generally elsewhere, the earlier attempts to 

 affiliate and classify the races of the country were based 

 on language. History gave very little assistance ; in fact 

 the Hindus can hardly be said to have had any history 

 before the first onset of Mussulman conquest. But a 

 rough division based on language was easily arrived at ; 

 the Hindus to the north of the Vindhya were recognised 

 as members of the great Indo-European family, and the 

 occupants of the Deccan, with their Dravidian tongues, 

 were supposed to be the descendants of the primitive 

 population, pushed down into the peninsula by the Aryan 



1 Mr. Risley pleads in excuse of the incompleteness of his work in the 

 Punjab the fact that the government of that province was too poor to assist 

 in it. 



