The tribes and castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Volume 1 (of 4)

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Anthropometry. 15. The result then of anthropometry as applied to caste appears to be that there is no good ground for disputing the fact that the present races of Northern India are practically one people. The figures prepared by Mr. Risley have been subjected to a close analysis by Mr. C. J. O’Donnell in the Bengal Census Report for 1891; and no account of the matter would be complete without reproducing his remarks.

16. “It is difficult to trace, in the introduction to The Castes and Tribes of Bengal, how far Mr. Risley recognises the influence of intermarriage between Aryans and Aboriginals, but he unquestionably denies the functional origin of caste, and seems to define it as ‘an institution, evolved by the Aryans in the attempt to preserve the purity of their own stock, and afterwards expanded and adapted, by the influence of a series of fictions, to fit an endless variety of social, religious and industrial conditions.’ With much originality he has sought to find a new guide to the ethnic composition of India in the science of anthropometry.

“ ‘Nowhere else,’ he writes, ‘in the world do we find the population of a large continent broken up into an infinite number of mutually exclusive aggregates, the members of which are forbidden by an inexorable social law to marry outside of the group to which they themselves belong. Whatever may have been the origin and the earlier developments of the caste system, this absolute prohibition of mixed marriages stands forth at the present day as its essential and most prominent characteristic. [cxx]In a society thus organised—a society sacrificing everything to pride of blood and the idea of social purity—it seemed that differences of physical type, however produced in past time, might be expected to manifest a high degree of persistence, and that the science which seeks to trace and express such differences would find a peculiarly favourable field for its operations. In Europe anthropometry has to confess itself hindered, if not baffled, by the constant intermixture of races, which tends to obscure and confuse the data arrived at by measurement. In a country where such intermixture is to a large extent eliminated, there were grounds for believing that divergent types would reveal themselves more clearly and that their characteristics would furnish some clue to their original race affinities.’

Two main types of Indian head. 17. “With the aid of the Governments of the North-Western Provinces and of the Panjab anthropometric data for ‘nearly 6,000 persons, representing 89 of the leading castes and tribes in Northern India, from the Bay of Bengal to the frontiers of Afghânistân,’ were obtained, but unfortunately Mr. Risley finds that ‘it would be vain to attempt within the compass of this essay to analyse and compare the large mass of figures which has been collected, or to develop at length the inferences which they may be taught to suggest.’ He has, however, made a few interesting deductions. Three well-known types of feature and physique have long been recognised in the Indian peninsula, the Aryan or Caucasian chiefly in Upper India, the Mongoloid, which is generally believed to be confined to [cxxi]the north-east corner of Bengal, and a Negrito, or, as Mr. Risley calls it, a Dravidian type, in Central and Southern India. Excluding the second, which he represents to be so local as to make its elimination a matter of little importance in discussing the ethnology of Indian peoples, Mr. Risley defines the other two as follows:—

“ ‘The Aryan type, as we find it in India at the present day, is marked by a relatively long (dolichocephalic) head; a straight, finely cut (leptorhine) nose; a long, symmetrically narrow face; a well developed forehead, regular features, and a high facial angle. In the Dravidian type the form of the head usually inclines to be dolichocephalic, but all other characters present a marked contrast to the Aryan. The nose is thick and broad, and the formula expressing its proportionate dimensions is higher than in any known race except the Negro. The facial angle is comparatively low; the lips are thick; the face wide and fleshy; the features coarse and irregular.’

“The following passage gives the most important of Mr. Risley’s deductions:—

‘Between these extreme types, which may fairly be regarded as representing two distinct races, we find a large number of intermediate groups, each of which forms, for matrimonial purposes, a sharply defined circle, beyond which none of its members can pass. By applying to the entire series the nasal index or formula of the proportions of the nose, which Professors Flower and Topinard agree in regarding as the best test of race distinctions, some remarkable results are arrived at. [cxxii]The average nasal proportions of the Mâlê Pahâria tribe are expressed by the figure 94·5, while the pastoral Gûjars of the Panjab have an index of 66·9, the Sikhs of 68·8, and the Bengal Brâhmans and Kâyasths of 70·4. In other words, the typical Dravidian, as represented by the Mâlê Pahâria, has a nose as broad in proportion to its length as the Negro, while this feature in the Aryan group can fairly bear comparison with the noses of 68 Parisians, measured by Topinard, which gave an average of 69·4. Even more striking is the curiously close correspondence between the gradations of racial type indicated by the nasal index and certain of the social data ascertained by independent enquiry. If we take a series of castes in Bengal, Bihâr, or the North-Western Provinces, and arrange them in the order of the average nasal index, so that the caste with the finest nose shall be at the top, and that with the coarsest at the bottom of the list, it will be found that this order substantially corresponds with the accepted order of social precedence. The casteless tribes, Kols, Korwas, Mundas, and the like, who have not yet entered the Brâhmanical system, occupy the lowest place in both series. Then come the vermin-eating Musahars and the leather-dressing Chamârs. The fisher castes of Bauri, Bind and Kewat are a trifle higher in the scale; the pastoral Goâla, the cultivating Kurmi, and a group of cognate castes from whose hands a Brâhman may take water, follow in due order, and from them we pass to the trading Khatris, the landholding Bâbhans, and the upper crust of Hindu society. Thus, it is [cxxiii]scarcely a paradox to lay down as a law of the caste organisation in Eastern India that a man’s social status varies in inverse ratio to the width of his nose.’

The Nasal Index. The best test of race distinction. 18. “The figures on which these statements are based are found in the third and fourth volumes of Mr. Risley’s instructive work; and if in examining them it appears that they do not bear out his conclusions, I hope not to fail in recognising the great service he has rendered to ethnographic study by introducing really scientific methods of enquiry.

“The following table is an exact reproduction of the averages of the nasal index at the beginning of Volume III:—

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