ANTHROPOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE ANGLO- 

 INDIANS OF CALCUTTA. 



Part I. Analysis of Male Stature. 



By Prasanta Chandra Mahai^anobis, B.Sc, B.A. (Cantab), 



Indian Educational Service, Professor of Physics, Presidency 



College, Calcutta. 



(Plates I— IV.) 



Introductory Note. 



The people with whom these papers will deal are those offi- 

 cially called " Anglo-Indians " in India. They are not, however, 

 the Anglo-Indian of English literature and common parlance 

 in which the term is applied to persons of English, or rather 

 British, birth who have spent a considerable part of their lives in 

 India. Some years ago the Government of India, seeking to 

 avoid the associations that had grown up round the name Eura- 

 sian, decided that persons of mixed Indian and European blood 

 should be known henceforth as Anglo-Indians. 1 The word Eura- 

 sians had itself been invented to avoid a coarser and more des- 

 criptive term. That even the more recent designation was inac- 

 curate in point of fact was pointed out at the time of its intro- 

 duction in a letter published in a Calcutta newspaper and signed 

 lC Franco-Burman.' ' The term Indian, indeed, had been stretched 

 to include all native denizens of the Indian Empire — Burmese, 

 Baluchis, etc., as well as Indians properly so-called; while it had 

 been forgotten that any other European nation but the English 

 had ever had a part in India. 



The observations on which Professor Mahalanobis' analyses 

 are based had their origin as follows. Ever since I began to take 

 a serious interest in anthropometry, I have had doubts as to the 

 value of bodily measurements taken on the living person. So 

 long ago as 1903,' 2 I pointed out that my own measurements of the 

 faces of the people of the Faroe Islands were completely at vari- 

 ance with those of a previous observer, and attributed the 

 different results mainly to slight, difference in technique. The 

 working out of the measurements of the various tribes of the 

 Malay Peninsula obtained in 1901-1902 3 by Mr. H. C. Robinson 

 and myself increased my doubts, and further made me suspicious 



1 I understand, however, that as early as 1830 the term Anglo-Indians had 

 already been applied to persons of mixed descent. 



2 Annandale, Proc. Roy. Sec. Edinburgh XXV, pp. 2-24 (1903). 



3 Annandale and Robinson, Fascicule Malayenses, Anthropology (1903 — 

 1 9<)4 )• 



