lxxii REPORT—1890. 
(B) ‘That the Council be recommended to urge upon the Government of India— 
‘(a) The desirability of procuring anthropometric measurements of a repre- 
sentative series of tribes and castes in the Punjab, Bombay, Madras, the 
Central Provinces, and Assam, it being understood that trained observers 
are already available. 
‘(b) Also that in the Enumerators’ Schedule of the Census of 1891 provision 
should be made for recording not only the caste to which a man belongs, 
but also the endogamous and exogamous groups within the caste of which 
he is a member, it being believed that this was actually done in the last 
Census of the Punjab, that it will not add to the cost of the census, and 
that it will materially enhance its accuracy and scientific value.’ 
The Council having considered this question resolved to send the 
following letter to the Secretary of State for India in Council :— 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 
22 Albemarle Street, London, W. 
February 1890. 
To the Secretary of State for India in Council. 
My Lord,—The Council of the British Association beg leave to state for your 
Lordship’s information that, at the recent Meeting of the Association at Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne, attention was drawn to the ethnographic and anthropometric researches 
undertaken in Northern India during the last five years, under the orders of the 
Government of Bengal. It is understood that an ethnographic survey, based upon 
the statistics collected in the census of 1881, of the traditions, customs, religion, and 
social relations of the various castes and tribes inhabiting the territories administered 
by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, has been conducted on the lines laid down in 
1874 by a committee of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 
At the same time anthropometric inquiries, on the system of measurement prescribed 
by Dr. Paul Topinard, of the School of Anthropology at Paris, have been made into 
the physical characteristics of nearly 6,000 persons, representing eighty-nine of the 
chief castes and tribes of Bengal, the North-West Provinces, Oudh, and the Punjab. 
The data collected in the course of these researches seem to the Council to possess 
considerable scientific interest, and they venture to submit for your Lordship’s con- 
sideration their views as to the advantage of further inquiry of the same kind in 
other parts of India, and on the question in what manner and to what extent the 
Government of India can properly be asked to assist in furthering such researches. 
2. Without some help from the Government it is clear that no private agency can 
hope to attain any considerable measure of success. The field is too large, and the 
variety of custom and language too great, for isolated unofficial workers to produce 
much impression. Such inquiries, moreover, in order to yield really valuable results, 
must apply to a series of castes and tribes numerous enough to allow of the compara- 
tive and statistical methods of investigation being applied on a tolerably large scale. 
It is only by following a peculiar custom through the various forms which it assumes 
in different social aggregates that a trustworthy conclusion can be arrived at con- 
cerning its probable origin. The complete executive organisation which the Govern- 
ment of India has at its disposal is admirably adapted, in respect of knowledge of 
the people, their languages, and their modes of thought, to observe and record facts 
which may prove to be of the highest scientific value, while the experience gained in 
Bengal seems to show that this can be done at comparatively trifling expense. 
3. Among the various kinds of information collected in the course of the inquiries 
set on foot by the Bengal Government, special interest attaches to two classes of 
data : first, the physical measurements already referred to, and secondly, the lists of 
the exogamous and endogamous subdivisions! which are met with within the 
different tribes and castes. Physical characters are held by the highest anthropo- 
logical authorities to be the best, if not the only true, tests of race affinity; while 
the character of the internal structure of tribes and castes has an important bearing 
* By the term ‘exogamous subdivision’ is meant a group from within which its 
male members cannot take their, wives; by that of ‘endogamous subdivision,’ a 
group from outside of which its male members cannot take their wives. 
