Aryans and British India / Thomas R. Trautmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Trautmann, Thomas R., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indo-Aryans--History.

Indo-Aryans.

India--History--British occupation, 1765-1947.

India.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 260 p. ) ill., maps ;

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, California : University of California Press, [1997]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Aryan," a word that today evokes images of racial hatred and atrocity, was first used by Europeans to suggest bonds of kinship, as Thomas Trautmann shows in his far-reaching history of British Orientalism and the ethnology of India. When the historical relationship uniting Sanskrit with the languages of Europe was discovered, it seemed clear that Indians and Britons belonged to the same family. Thus the Indo-European or Aryan idea, based on the principle of linguistic kinship, dominated British ethnological inquiry. In the nineteenth century, however, an emergent biological "race science" attacked the authority of the Orientalists. The spectacle of a dark-skinned people who were evidently civilized challenged Victorian ideas, and race science responded to the enigma of India by redefining the Aryan concept in narrowly "white" racial terms. By the end of the nineteenth century, race science and Orientalism reached a deep and lasting consensus in regard to India, which Trautmann calls "the racial theory of Indian civilization," and which he undermines with his powerful analysis of colonial ethnology in India. His work of reassessing British Orientalism and the Aryan idea will be of great interest to historians, anthropologists, and cultural critics.--Publisher description.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

CHAPTER I. Introduction

CHAPTER 2. The Mosaic Ethnology of Asiatick Jones

CHAPTER 3. British Indomania

CHAPTER 4. British Indophobia

CHAPTER 5. Philology and Ethnology

CHAPTER 6. Race Science versus Sanskrit

CHAPTER 7. The Racial Theory of Indian Civilization

CHAPTER 8. Epilogue

References

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780520917927

0520917928

9780585104454

058510445X

OCLC:

1149490589