"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...
"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 s...
British rule of India brought together two very different traditions of scholarship about language, whose conjuncture led to several intellectual breakthroughs of lasting value. Two of these were especially important: the conceptualization of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones at Calcutta in 1786proposing that Sanskrit is related to Persian and languages of Europeand the conceptualization of the Dravidian language family of South India by F.W. Ellis at Madras in 1816the Dravidian proof, showing that the languages of South India are related to one another but are not...
British rule of India brought together two very different traditions of scholarship about language, whose conjuncture led to several intellectual brea...
Lewis Henry Morgan of Rochester, New York, lawyer and pioneering anthropologist, was the leading American contributor of his generation to the social sciences. Among the classic works whose conjunction in the 1860s gave modern anthropology its shape, Morgan's massive and technical Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family was decisive. Thomas R. Trautmann offers a new interpretation of the genesis of "kinship" and of the role it played in late nineteenth-century intellectual history. This Bison Books edition features a new introduction and appendices by the author. Thomas R....
Lewis Henry Morgan of Rochester, New York, lawyer and pioneering anthropologist, was the leading American contributor of his generation to the social ...
India: Brief History of a Civilization, Second Edition, provides a brief overview of a very long period, allowing students to acquire a mental map of the entire history of Indian civilization in a short book. Most comprehensive histories devote a few chapters to the early history of India and an increasing number of pages to the more recent period, giving an impression that early history is mere background and that Indian civilization finds its fulfillment in the nation-state. Thomas R. Trautmann believes that the deep past lives on and is a valuable resource for understanding the present day...
India: Brief History of a Civilization, Second Edition, provides a brief overview of a very long period, allowing students to acquire a mental map of ...