Abstract
INDIA is so poorly supplied with anthropological literature that the appearance of a new periodical to be devoted entirely to the scientific study of anthropology rnust be regarded as something of an event. The work of the Indian Anthropological Institute, to which reference is made elsewhere in this issue of NATURE (see p. 721), has been hampered seriously over since its inception in 1936 through lack of an official organ for recording the deliberations and discussions of its members. Financial conditions proved an insuperable obstacle imtil the University of Calcutta, thanks to the good offices of the Yice-Chancellor, Mr. Syamaprasad Mookerjee, generously came to its assistance with an offer to assume responsibility for printing the Journal of the Institute free of charge. The first issue, which has appeared recently, includes communications received from members up to the close of 1938, among them the presidential address by Dr. J. H. Hutton, the first president, in which he puts forward the suggestion that the Institute should formulate a five years’ plan of research, to be entrusted to sub-committees, and Colonel Gordon offers some pregnant, as well as pungently critical, comments on the methods and organization of archæological studies in India. Reference to both these communications will be found on another page. A cognate question is raised by Colonel Germano da Silva Correia, who after a critical examination of the various theories of the racial origins of the peoples of India, put forward by anthropologists from the days of H. H. Risley onward, suggests that the methods of inquiry hitherto pursued should be supplemented by a systematic survey of blood groups. Among other contributors Mr. Sasanka Sarkar puts forward a proposal for a classification of the nasal elevation index, and Dr. Biren Bonnerjea, profiting by his sojourn in the United States, discusses “Fish-Hooks in North America and their Distribution”. We offer the new periodical a cordial welcome, and wish it a long and prosperous career.
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New Anthropological Periodical in India. Nature 144, 745–746 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144745d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144745d0