Sarat Chandra Roy (4 November 1871– 30 April 1942) was an Indian scholar of anthropology. He is widely regarded as the 'father of Indian

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

', the 'first Indian ethnographer', and as the 'first Indian anthropologist'.

Early life

Born on 4 November 1871 to Purna Chandra Roy, a member of the Bengal Judicial Service, in a village in

Khulna district Khulna District ( bn, খুলনা জেলা , ''Khulna Jela'' also ''Khulna Zila'') is a district of Bangladesh. It is located in the Khulna Division. It is bordered on the north by the Jessore District and the Narail District, on the so ...

(now in Bangladesh), young Sarat came in contact with tribal people after his father was posted in

Purulia Purulia is a city and a municipality in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the headquarters of the Purulia district. It is located on the north of the Kangsabati River. Geography Location Purulia is located at . It has an average elev ...

. After his father's death in 1885, he was educated at his maternal uncle's home in Calcutta. In 1892, he graduated in English literature from the General Assembly's Institution (now

Scottish Church College Scottish Church College is a college affiliated by Calcutta University, India. It offers selective co-educational undergraduate and postgraduate studies and is the oldest continuously running Christian liberal arts and sciences college in A ...

). He earned a postgraduate degree in English from the same institution, and subsequently studied law at the Ripon College (now

Surendranath College Surendranath College is an undergraduate college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, in Kolkata, India. It was founded in 1884 by the nationalist leader and scholar Surendranath Banerjee. The Women's section of the college was founded ...

). He had worked for some time as a headmaster at the Mymensingh High School, and later as a principal at the GEL Mission High School in Ranchi. In Ranchi, he became aware of the plight of the tribals. He left teaching and started practicing as a lawyer and became a pleader in the district court in the 24 Parganas in Calcutta in 1897. A year later he moved to Ranchi, where he practiced at the court of the judicial commissioner in Ranchi.

Career in anthropology

His interest into the plight of the " tribal" people developed in the course of his visits as a lawyer, in the interior areas of the

Chota Nagpur Division Chota Nagpur Division, also known as the South-West Frontier, was an administrative division of British India. It included most of the present-day state of Jharkhand as well as adjacent portions of West Bengal, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh. History ...

. He was deeply moved by the plight of the Munda, Oraon and other tribal groups, who were subjected to the continued oppression by an apathetic colonial administration, and by a general contempt towards them in courts of law, as "upper-caste" Hindu lawyers had little knowledge of their customs,

religions Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

, customary laws and languages. Keeping all this in perspective, he decided to spend years and decades among tribal folks to study their languages, conduct ethnography, and interpret their customs, practices, religion and laws for the benefit of humanity, and also for the established system of colonial civil jurisprudence. In so doing, he wrote pioneering monographs, that would set the ground for broader understanding and future research. Thus although he was not formally trained in either ethnology or anthropology, he is regarded the first Indian ethnologist, or ethnographer or an Indian anthropologist. In his later years, he spent his time editing ''

Man in India ''Man in India'' is a journal on anthropology with a focus on South Asia. Its scope includes biological and sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and folk-culture. It is currently published by Serials Publications Pvt. Ltd., a publ ...

'' and in other journals, writing and lecturing at the newly established anthropology department at the

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a public collegiate state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered one of best state research university all over India every yea ...

, and serving as a reader at

Patna University Patna University is a public state university in Patna, Bihar, India. It was established on 1 October 1917 during the British Raj. It is the first university in Bihar and the seventh oldest university in the Indian subcontinent in the modern ...

Works

Books and monographs

*''The Mundas and Their Country'' (1912) *''The Oraons of Chota Nagpur'' (1915) *''The Birhors'' (1925) (a digitized version is available her

*''Oraon Religion and Customs'' (1927) *''The Hill Bhuiyas of Orissa'' (1935) *''The Kharias'' vol.1 (1937) *''The Kharias'' vol.2 (1937)

Journal contributions

*''

'', the first anthropological journal in India was started by him in 1921. * He wrote extensively on totemism among the Asur, the

Ho people The Ho or Kolha people are an Austroasiatic Munda ethnic group of India. They call themselves the ''Ho'', ''Hodoko'' and ''Horo,'' which mean 'human' in their own language. Officially, however, they are mentioned in different subgroups like K ...

of Singhbhum, the Pahira of Chota Nagpur; on the Lepcha funeral; kinship among Sikkimese people,

Khasi people The Khasi people are an ethnic group of Meghalaya in north-eastern India with a significant population in the bordering state of Assam, and in certain parts of Bangladesh. Khasi people form the majority of the population of the eastern part of M ...

; Khond human sacrifice; Korku memorial tablets; black Bhils of Jaisamand lake in Rajputana, and on the ethnic groups of Burma.

Recognition

Kaisar-i-Hind Silver Medal The Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for Public Service in India was a medal awarded by the Emperor/Empress of India between 1900 and 1947, to "any person without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex ... who shall have distinguished himself (o ...

, 1913 * Roy Bahadur, 1919 *Elected as honorary member of the Folklore Society of London, being the only Indian to be awarded thus *Elected as president of the Anthropological Section in the Indian Science Congress *Elected as president of the Anthropology section of the All India Oriental Conference, 1932 *Elected as president of the Folklore section of the All India Oriental Conference, 1933 *Elected as member of the Council d'Honour of the International Congress of Ethnological Sciences *Foundation Fellow of National Institute of Sciences *Foundation Fellow of

*The Indian Science Congress awarded him with a commemorative volume of essays in anthropology. *The ''Sarat Chandra Roy Institute of Anthropological Studies'' in Ranchi, established in 1979, commemorates his name.Srivastava, Vinay Kumar and Sukant K. Chaudhury. ''Anthropological Studies of Indian Tribes'' in ''Sociology And Social Anthropology In India'', edited by Yogesh Atal, Indian Council of Social Science Research, 2009, p. 52.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roy, Sarat Chandra 1871 births 1942 deaths Cultural anthropologists Indian anthropologists Scottish Church College alumni Surendranath College alumni University of Calcutta alumni University of Calcutta faculty Patna University faculty Indian social sciences writers 20th-century Indian non-fiction writers 19th-century Indian non-fiction writers People from Khulna District 19th-century Indian social scientists 20th-century Indian social scientists