cexxvi Proceedings of the Asialic Soc. of Bengal. {N.S., XVII, 
Section of Anthropology and Ethnography. 
President :—Rat BAHADUR Sarat CHanpra Roy, 
M.A., B M.L.C. 
Presidential Address. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN INDIA. 
All students of Anthropology in India will, I am sure, 
join with me in offering their hearty thanks to the Executive 
Committee of the Indian Science Congress for having at length 
agreed to have a separate and independent section of Anthro- 
pology. My first impulse on receiving, late last year, the 
flattering invitation to preside over the meetings of this sec- 
tion was to thankfully decline the honour on the ground of 
unfitness. Apprehending however that further delay thus 
caused in selecting a President might perhaps lead toa further 
postponement of the inauguration, or, more correctly, the 
revival of a much-needed separate anthropological section, I 
duty. Ands 
this section. Although I am painfully conscious of my own 
unfitness to fill the onerous task of presiding over the meetings 
of such a learned body, my only excuse for standing here to- 
day is my ardent devotion to the science and my recognition 
of its paramount claims to our attention and service. 
The claim of Anthropology to be recognized as an im- 
portant science can no longer be seriously disputed even by 
the votaries of the exact sciences. Such a rigorous critic of 
science as Prof. Karl Pearson, the celebrated author of the 
Grammar of Science, in his Presidential Address to the Anthro- 
pological section of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, at its eighty-eighth annual meeting held at 
Cardiff in August last, declared that Anthropology should 
old the position of the Queen of Sciences, and form the 
crowning study of the academic curriculum.” e emphas- 
ized the necessity of having institutes of Anthropology for 
teaching and research in order to place anthropological science 
in its true position. 
Although but few learned societies in India have paid 
adequate attention in the past to the claims of this science, 
and Indian Universities have hitherto ignored those claims, 
there are fortunately indications that Indian scholars and 
educationists are now slowly waking up to the necessity of 
having suitable institutions in this country for anthropological 
study and research. And it augurs well for the future of 
anthropological research in India that latterly a few research 
societies in the country are paying increasing attention to tlie 
