TY  - BOOK
AU  - Trautmann,Thomas R.
TI  - Aryans and British India
SN  - 0520205464
AV  - DS425 .T68 2006
U1  - 954.031 TR.A 2006 22
PY  - 2006///
CY  - Berkeley
PB  - University of California Press
KW  - Indo-Aryans
KW  - History
KW  - India
KW  - British occupation, 1765-1947
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index; The mosaic ethnology of Asiatick Jones -- British Indomania -- British Indophobia -- Philology and ethnology -- Race science versus Sanskrit -- The racial theory of Indian civilization
N2  - "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
ER  -