1921.] The Eighth Indian Science Congress. CCXXVil 
Calcutta adequate provision for regular instruction in the 
science is being made by the creation of Chairs, Lecturerships 
and Readerships and the formation of an Anthropological 
Museum and Laboratory. It is none too early therefore that 
the Executive Committee of the Indian Science Congress have 
h 
second. We may now confidently expect that succeeding 
sessions of this Congress will be welcomed by an ever-in- 
creasing number of votaries of the science all over India as 
suitable occasions when they may come together once a year to 
exchange ideas, report some of the interesting results of their 
year’s anthropological work, and discuss methods that may be 
usefully followed and problems that await to be seriously 
tackled and solved. 
As this is practically the first sitting of an independent 
anthropological section of the Congress, it is perhaps fitting 
that we should take a rapid survey of the anthropological work 
so far done in India, and form a rough estimate of the enor- 
mous work that awaits to be done in the future. 
In reviewing the past history of anthropological research in 
‘ India, the first thing that strikes the Indian 
Picloas ig Bape student and makes him hang down his head 
pology. in shame is that up till the present, almost 
n 
work of European investigators whereas we Indians have 
culpably neglected to take our proper share in the work. 
Instead of taking, as we should have done, a leading part in that 
work, a few of us have contributed in periodicals only occasiona 
papers of ethnological interest written mostly by way 0 
intellectual pastime during intervals of other business ; and only 
] 
f 
This is all the more to be regretted as but few countries present 
a wider field for anthropological investigation and afford promise 
inte three classes : (1) 
Journals of learned Societies ; (2) Government Reports and 
Handbooks on Castes and Tribes; and (3) Monographs on 
particular Tribes or Castes. 
It is to the Asiatic Society of Bengal that we owe the 
