Race Matters: Orientalism and Religion, India and Beyond c. 1770-1880

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 41, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 471-513

  Kapla, Shruti ^a  

^a TUFTS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVILIZATION; CULTURAL HISTORY; ORIENTALISM; RACE; RELIGION;

ASIA; EURASIA; INDIA; SOUTH ASIA;

EID: 34247251895     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X06002526     Document Type: Article

References (190)

1. George Murray Paterson, 'On the Phrenology of Hindoostan', Transactions of the Phrenological Society, vol. I (1823), p. 433.
2. The approach here is schematic and not comprehensive and other facets such as caste and linguistic-regional identity are outside the purview of this article. On recent revisions of the concept of race in other contexts see especially Nancy Shoemaker, A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth Century North America (New York, 2004)
3. and Jonathon Glassman, 'Slower than a Massacre: The Multiple Sources of Racial Thought in Colonial Africa', American Historical Review 109:3 (2004), pp. 720-54.
4. Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India 1600-1850 (New Delhi, 1999).
5. Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics, 1792-1805 (London, 1980)
6. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, 1995).
7. But see David Arnold, 'Race, Place and Bodily Difference in early Nineteenth Century India', Historical Research 77:196 (2004)
8. and Sudipta Sen, A Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins of British India (New York, 2002).
9. Michael Banton, Racial Theories (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 17-78.
10. J. F. Blumenbach, On the Natural Variety of Mankind (1795) republished in The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach edited and translated by Thomas Bendyshe (London, 1865).
11. C. A Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004).
12. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 13th ed (1910), vols. 3-4.
13. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Jersey and London, 1987), p. 215.
14. William Lawrence, A Short System of Comparative Anatomy translated from the German of J. F. Blumenbach (London, 1807).
15. K. F. H. Marx, 'Life of Blumenbach' (1840) republished in Bendyshe (trans. ed.), Anthropological Treatises, p. 9.
16. Thomas Bendyshe, Preface, Anthropological Treatises, pp. viii-xi;
17. Banton, Racial Theories, p. 22.
18. J. F. Blumenbach, De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa Editio Tertia: Praemissa est Epistola as Virum Perrillstrem Joseph Banks (Gottingen, 1795).
19. Blumenbach, Natural Variety in Bendyshe (ed. trans.), Anthropological Treatises, p. 161.
20. Bernal, Black Athena, p. 478.
21. Rudolph Wagner, 'On the Anthropological Collection of the Physiological Institute of Gottingen' (1856) in Bendyshe, (ed. trans.), Anthropological Treatises, pp. 347-55.
22. Perhaps the largest collection of skulls from the sub-continent belonged to the anti-abolitionist Samuel Morton of Philadelphia see, J. C. Nott, 'Comparative Anatomy of Races', in J. C. Nott & G. R. Gliddon, Types of Mankind: Dedicated to the Memory of Samuel George Morton, (London, 1854), p. 450.
23. Bendyshe (ed. trans.), Anthropological Treatises, pp. 159-62.
24. Ibid., p. 160.
25. Ibid., p. 269.
26. Ibid.
27. Bernal, Black Athena, p. 219.
28. Ibid., pp. 219-20.
29. Bendyshe (ed. trans.), Anthropological Treatises, p. 270.
30. Ibid., Note 3, p. 270.
31. Ibid., Archaeologica, Vol. III, Tab. 25, 26, 27.
32. Ibid.
33. Geoff Quilley and John Bonehill (ed.), William Hodges 1744-1797 (New Haven, 2004).
34. I am grateful to Dr Richard Drayton for this insight.
35. J. F. Blumenbach, On the Natural Variety of Mankind (London, 3rd edition, 1795), p. 3.
36. C. A. Bayly (ed.), The Raj (London, 1990). Entry 122, i & ii, pp. 108-9.
37. Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 132-3.
38. Also see, Banton, Racial Theories and George W. Stocking, 'From Chronology to Ethnology, James Cowles Prichard and British Anthropology 1800-1850' George W. Stocking (ed.), Researches into the Physical History of Man (Chicago, 1973).
39. Trautmann, Aryans, p. 167.
40. Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions.
41. George W. Stocking, 'From Chronology to Ethnology', in George W. Stocking (ed.), Researches.
42. The key sources for Prichard were the orientalists William Jones, H. T. Colebrooke, and Francis Wilford and the naturalist Francis Buchanan.
43. As Prichard wrote, 'The former Hindoos were Negroes', in Stocking (ed.), Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, p. 392.
44. Ibid., p. 391.
45. James Cowles Prichard, An Analysis of the Egyptian Mythology (London, 1819)
46. and the comparative work, James Prichard, 'Temperaments' in his Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, vol. 4 (1845), pp. 349-63
47. republished in Roger Cooter (ed.), Phrenology in Europe and America vol. I (London, 2001).
48. J. C. Prichard, The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations proved by a comparison of their dialects with the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Teutonic Languages (London, 1831).
49. Roger Cooter (ed.), Phrenology in Europe, vol. I, p. xv.
50. See also Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 1984).
51. Cooter, Phrenology, p. xviii.
52. 'Letter from Dr. Murray Paterson to a friend [George Combe] in Edinburgh', April 23, 1825, The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany (hereafter, PJM), vol. III, Aug. (1826), pp. 101-4.
53. It is the same letter as Paterson to Combe, 23 April 1825, George Combe Papers, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (hereafter, NLS) Ms 7216, ff. 48-9.
54. Letter from George Combe to George Murray Paterson, 22 March 1823, George Combe Papers, NLS Ms 7382, f. 238.
55. Letter from Ram Mohan Roy to George Murray Paterson, 10 March 1822, cited in Paterson, 'Phrenology', Phrenological Transactions, pp. 433-4.
56. Letter from G.M Paterson to George Combe 16 May 1823, 28 January 1824, and 13 April 1824 NLS, Ms. 2713, ff. 9-10, 166-7, 168-9, respectively.
57. Henry Harpur Spry, 'Some Account of the Gang Murderers of Central India, Commonly called Thugs. Accompanying the Skulls of Seven of Them', PJM vol. VIII (December 1832-June 1834), pp. 511-24.
58. This is not to assert that the metro-colonial is a relationship of superior-inferior (à la Basalla) and indeed, that the metropolitan and the colonial must necessarily be seen in a single analytical frame. At the same time, in making the connection explicit between the two runs the danger of a flat, isomorphic history, Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (London, 2001).
59. George Basalla, 'The Spread of Western Science', Science, no. 156 (1967), pp. 611-22.
60. Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, 'Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda' in Frederick Cooper and Anna Laura Stoler (eds.), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 1-48.
61. For instance, Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi, 1995), Introduction.
62. Letter from George M Paterson, London, to George Combe, 1 January 1823, NLS, Ms. 2713, ff. 164-5.
63. Abel, Clarke (1780-1826), naturalist and surgeon, DNB entry by B. D. Jackson revised by P. E. Kell (Oxford, 2004).
64. Also, Clarke Abel, Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China (London, 1818).
65. Bengal Directory and General Register...1825 (Calcutta, 1825/6?), p. 365.
66. Ibid.
67. Also, Bengal Annual Register and Directory for the year 1831 (Calcutta, 1831), Appendix, p. 249.
68. Letter from George Murray Paterson to George Combe, 23 April 1825, NLS, Ms. 7216, ff. 48-9.
69. Ibid. Clark Abel provided the skull of a Burmese soldier to the Society.
70. Also, Bengal Directory, p. 365.
71. de Savighnac also engraved heads for Company artistes like George Chinnery whose key patron was also Abel, see Patrick Conner, George Chinnery 1774-1852 Artist of India and the China Coast (Suffolk, 1993), p. 115.
72. On bemusement see Gyan Prakash's discussion on Indian responses to museums in his Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, 1999)
73. and on reactions to bodily measurements by ethnologists, Crispin Bates, 'Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: The Early Origins of Indian Anthropometry', in Peter Robb (ed.) The Concept of Race.
74. Don Jose Bascapo (alias John Trotter) Travels in Phrenologasto (Calcutta, 1825) reprinted from London in 1827, was a popular pamphlet used much by those who claimed phrenology as a 'psuedo' science.
75. David Drummond, Objections to Phrenology (Calcutta, 1829), p. 191.
76. Thomas Edwards, Henry Derozio, the Eurasian Poet, Teacher and Journalist (Calcutta, 1884), pp. 10-21.
77. Drummond, Objections, pp. 181-9.
78. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 1767 with an introduction by Duncan Forbes (Edinburgh, 1966).
79. Also Adam Ferguson, Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Moral Sentiment, Happiness and National Felicity (Paris, 1805).
80. George Lyon, 'Essay on the Phrenological causes of the different degrees of Liberty enjoyed by different Nations', PJM, vol. II (1824/5), pp. 598-619 and vol. III (1825/6), pp. 223-51.
81. Richard Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion and Reform, 1830-1841 (Oxford, 1987),
82. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867 (London, 2002).
83. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley, 1998).
84. Combe is remembered today above all for his role in the propagation of secular school education particularly in Scotland.
85. This is especially representative of those who sought to use phrenology beyond the domestic frontier of Britain and of those phrenologists who mapped comparisons between the Hindu and the African, see below. Combe himself was cautious in his approach to Christianity.
86. On his beliefs see George Murray Paterson, Sacred Lemmas or Analysis of Scriptures Historical, Prophetical and Evangelical according to the Science of Analogies (Calcutta, 1826).
87. Paterson, 'Phrenology', p. 445.
88. He further manipulated skulls of those confined in the Calcutta Lunatic Asylum that he called a 'picture of passive imbecility, than a heart rendering scene of raving mania or of moping melancholy', ibid., p 446.
89. On the relations between colonial psychiatry and phrenology see Shruti Kapila, 'The making of colonial psychiatry, Bombay Presidency, 1849-1940', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2002.
90. Paterson, 'Phrenology' pp. 432-3.
91. Ibid., pp. 431-43.
92. Ibid., p. 445.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. James Montgomery, On the Phrenology of the Hindoos and Negroes with Strictures Thereon by Corden Thompson (London, 1829) read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Sheffield, February 7, 1827.
96. On Montgomery see, Cooter, Cultural Meaning, pp. 219, and 291.
97. Montgomery, 'Phrenology', p. 13.
98. Ronald Inden, 'Orientalist Constructions of India', Modern Asian Studies 20: 3 (1986) 401-46.
99. Montgomery, 'Phrenology', p. 12.
100. This included comparisons also with Native Americans, ibid., p. 24-5.
101. Ibid., pp. 24, 27-31.
102. See also. George Combe, 'Phrenological View of the Question of Colonial Slavery', PJM, vol. VIII (1832/4), pp. 77-92
103. Corden Thompson, 'Strictures on Mr. Montgomery's Essay on the Phrenology of Hindoos and Negroes', in Montgomery, Phrenology, pp. 35-62. Thompson was a senior physiologist at the Sheffield General Infirmary.
104. Ibid., p. 43.
105. Ibid., P. 57. Any number of such articles could be cited from this period from the PJM.
106. See for instance, Anon, 'On the character and cerebral development of the inhabitants of Ceylon',PJM, vol. VII (1832), pp. 634-52,
107. or the world-comparative Anon, 'On the coincidence between the natural talents and dispositions of nations and the development of their brains', PJM, vol. V, pp. 1-23.
108. Collycoomar Doss (Kali Kumar Das), Address Delivered before the School Society's School, for the Purpose of Establishing the Calcutta Phrenological Society, 7 June 1845. (np. nd.).
109. See for instance, The Proceedings and Transactions of the Bethune Society, from November 10th 1859, to April 20 1869 (Calcutta, 1870),
110. Bengal Directory and Annual Register for 1855 (Calcutta, 1855), Part VIII.
111. Collycoomar Doss (Kali Kumar Das), General Reflections on Christianity... (Calcutta, 1845), pp. 172-3.
112. On David Hare, David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton, 1979), 40-7.
113. David Hare arrived in Calcutta around 1800 as a watchmaker but then became involved in higher education for Bengalis. A popular figure when he died in 1842 he was followed to his grave by a crowd numbering in thousands.
114. Proceedings and Transactions of the Bethune Society, p. cxxxvii.
115. Letter from Nobin Chandra Bose to George Combe, Calcutta 7 August 1847, NLS, Ms. 7283, f.64.
116. Kali Kumar Das, General Reflections, p. 241.
117. Proceedings and Transactions of the Bethune Society, pp. xxxii, cxxxvii.
118. Ibid.
119. Also, Doss, Address, p. 2.
120. 'A short history of phrenology', The Pamphleteer: A Journal of Phrenology, Sciences in General and Arts, vol. I, no. 1, edited by Cally Coomar Doss (Calcutta, 1850), pp. 3-17.
121. Also, Das, General Reflections, pp. 104-5, 111-2,
122. Doss, Address.
123. 'Phrenological development of the Bengalees', The Pamphleteer, vol. I, no. 3 (1850), p. 67.
124. On questions of the place of Europe in Bengali sensibilities see Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal (Delhi, 2nd ed., 2002).
125. 'Our Plans and Objectives', The Pamphleteer, vol. I, no. 1 (Calcutta, 1850), p. 1.
126. On a portrayal of the eccentricities of head measuring see the character Balaram in Amitav Ghosh's, The Circle of Reason (Delhi, ed., 2000).
127. Among others who pamphleteered on phrenology include Nursing Chunder Haldar of Bhowanipur who converted to Christianity, see for instance his Practical Uses of Phrenology (Calcutta, 1884),
128. Phrenological Relations of the Brain in its Mental Functions (Bhowanipore, 1885).
129. C. A. Bayly, 'Liberalism at large: Mazzini and transformations in Indian political thought' (Mss), Plenary Lecture delivered at Tufts University, 7th April 2005.
130. Jadu Nath Mazumdar, The Substance of Two Lectures on the Requisites of a True Patriot and Marriage its Social and Spiritual Aspects (Lucknow, 1885).
131. Mahendra Lal Sircar, On the Physiological Basis of Psychology (Calcutta, 1870).
132. This was a reworked version of essays that were published a year before in the Calcutta Journal of Medicine, and was delivered as a lecture at the Canning Institute, Howrah in April 1869.
133. Ibid, pp. 2-3, 8, 18.
134. Mahendra Lal Sircar, Moral Influence of Physical Science, Lecture delivered at the Town Hall, Calcutta, on January 7, 1891, p. 18.
135. On an extended discussion on Sircar's interpretations on religion and science see Kapila, 'Making', pp. 215-225.
136. On Sircar's life-history see Sarat Chandra Ghosh, Life of Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar (Calcutta, 1935).
137. On Sircar and 'national science' David Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 154-9.
138. Letter from George Combe to Nobin Chandra Bose, 15 Dec 1846, NLS, Ms. 7390. ff. 573-4.
139. See for instance from George Combe to Nobin Chandra Bose 4 February 1848, NLS, Ms. 7391, f. 297, Letter from Nobin Chandra Bose to George Combe 7 December 1848, NLS, Ms. 7289, f. So.
140. Letter from George Combe to Nobin Chandra Bose 15 December 1846, NLS, Ms. 7390, ff. 573-4.
141. Letter from H. H. Wilson to George Combe 27 July 1836, NLS, Ms. 7241, f.189. Combe and Wilson were connected by family ties.
142. Letter from H. H. Wilson to George Combe 22 May 1858, NLS, Ms. 7374, ff. 122-3.
143. Letter from H. H. Wilson to George Combe 10 July 1858, NLS, Ms. 7374, ff. 124-7.
144. Ibid.
145. Ibid.
146. Anon, 'Phrenological Analysis of Rammohan Roy', PJM vol. VIII (1834), pp. 577-602.
147. H. H. Wilson's 'Description of the Natives of India' (unpublished and written for George Combe), 14 January 1858, NLS, Ms 7437, ff. 83-9.
148. Ibid., ff. 85-6.
149. Ibid., ff. 86-8.
150. Letter from George Combe to W. R. Young, 'Our Rule in India', 6th February 1858, The Scotsman, 19th February 1858 (unpaginated).
151. Ibid.
152. See for instance, the discussion of the 'simian like features' of a fakir hung during the mutiny, R. W. Reid, Exhibition and description of the skull of a Microcephalic Hindu' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 24 (1894-5), pp. 104-8, plus Plates.
153. Conversation between Professor Julian Morrow and Richard Papen in Donna Tartt's The Secret History (London, 1992), p. 30.
154. See takant, Mudrasamudrik athva Manushchya Svabhavaachi Parakh [Mudrasamudrik or the examination of human nature] (Khanpur, n.d.). I am grateful to Mrunal Patnikar for his help at the Marathi Granth Sangrahalya, Mumbai.
155. Samudrikvidya was also referred to and was synonymous with Lakshan-gyan or Knowledge of character and Mudravigyan or the science of signs and expressions.
156. Ishnarayan Joshi, 'Samudrik-Shastra ki utpatti tatha itihas' [Origins and history of Samudrik-shastra] in his Mukhakriti-Rahasya [Mysteries of the Shape of Faces], (Bhopal, 1935), p. 1. All translations from Hindi are mine.
157. Ibid., pp. 10-3.
158. One of the earliest printed texts in Hindi, Radhavallabh Charan, Granth Samudrikam (Calcutta, Burra Bazaar, n.p., 1849) is similar to Joshi's text but does not provide a commentary on the origins of these practices.
159. Banwari Lal's Kautukratnaprakash (Chintamani Bookseller, Furrukhabad, 2nd ed., 1862) a small 15 page pamphlet and a similar handbook to the above claimed to have sold out within days of its publication.
160. Lithographs such as Pandit Keshoo Prasad's. Jyotish Sar or the Essence of Astrology (n.p., 1868) published by the author used a mixture of Sanskrit and bhasha included extensive discussion on Samudrik.
161. Early nineteenth century Sanskrit manuscripts on the same include Samudrika, British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections, Or. Mss. Hindi B 41 and Or. Mss. 13254.
162. Vaman Pandurang Shastri Bhave, Samudrik aani stri-purush shareer lakshan vidya [Samudrik and the knowledge of bodily signs in men and women] (Mumbai, 1889), n.p.
163. Bhave, Samudrik, n.p.
164. and Joshi, Mukha-kriti, p. 11.
165. Some of the other texts in Marathi on the same include Shverkar Govindshastri, Samudrik Lakshanam (Mumbai, 1881),
166. Ramchandra Sakaharam, Samudrik, (Pune, 1879),
167. Patwardhan Raghunath Moreshawar, Samudrik Shastra (Pune, 1920).
168. Joshi, Mukha-kriti, pp. 1-2
169. and also Bhave, Samudrik.
170. Sudipta Kaviraj, 'Two Histories of Bengali', in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley, and Delhi 2003).
171. Joshi Mukha-kriti, p. 6.
172. On 'Hindu Science' see David Arnold, Science
173. and Gyan Prakash, Another Reason.
174. Seetakant, Mudrasamudrik, 'Praastavik' [Introduction] n.p.
175. Ibid.
176. An elaboration of this issue will appear in Shruti Kapila, Governments of the Mind: Psycho-Sciences and Selfhood in Colonial India forthcoming.
177. Radhavallabha Dasa, Manatattava-sarsangraha: A treatise on Phrenology compiled and translated from the English of Dr. Spurzheim and Mr. Combe (Calcutta, 1849). I am indebted to Neilesh Bose for his translation from the Bengali.
178. Dasa, Manatattava, pp. 1-2.
179. Ibid., pp. 8-16.
180. Shridhar Narayan Shrangpani, Mudrvigyan athara Manav-svabhav darshan-shastra [Mudravigyan or the Philosophy of Human Nature] (Indore, 1935), pp. 118-22. He was palace-surgeon at the princely state of Indore.
181. Anon, Vidyasagar: Indian Pocket Cycopeadia (Aligarh, 2nd ed. 1911)
182. Anon, Samudrik-Sastram or the Hindu Science of Palmistry (Calcutta, 1909).
183. Shruti Kapila, Governments of the Mind.
184. Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race.
185. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: An Enquiry into the Origin of Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).
186. Insightful critiques of Anderson include Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000).
187. A growing number of studies of print culture and its relation to identity include Charu Gupta, Sexualiy, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Delhi, 2001),
188. Francesca Orsini, The Hindu Public Sphere 1920-1940: Language and Literature in the age of Nationalism (Delhi, 2002),
189. Anshu Malhothra, Gender, Caste and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab (Delhi, 2002),
190. and Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere: Western India under Colonialism (Delhi, 2002).