Traces of Proto-Anthropology in the Bangla Language: Pluralizing the Discipline Through Alternative History

Abstract (English)

This paper aims to pluralize anthropology’s history by examining colonial Bengali travelogues written by two Bengali-speaking authors that exhibit ethnographic sensibilities before the formal institutionalization of anthropology in the Bangla language. Analyzing two Bangla travelogues, Sanjib Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Palamau (1880) and Pramatha Ranjan Ray’s Boner Khabor (1920), I explore how these writings represent a critical period in Bangla, where ethnographic predecessors intersected with colonial tensions surrounding culture and othering. Palamau is based on Chattopadhyay’s travels in a region dominated by the Kol (an indigenous group) in present-day Jharkhand. In contrast, Ray’s Boner Khabor (News from the Forest) centres on his experiences as a surveyor in the colonial administration, where he documented his encounters with various forest-dependent communities across colonial India.

The term “proto-anthropology,” first used by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sivert Nielsen in A History of Anthropology (2001), refers to writings that demonstrate an anthropological sensibility before the academic establishment of anthropology. In Western disciplinary histories of anthropology, the origins of proto-anthropology are often traced to Greek travelogues such as those of Herodotus and other classical historians. However, in the Indian subcontinent, the trajectory of anthropological inquiry is marked by a disjuncture shaped by British colonial domination. Much of the early textual engagement with indigenous and peripheral communities appears in travel writings by British administrators or Indian elites employed in colonial offices. This context led to a tension between colonialism, othering, and ethnocentrism.

This research problematizes the presence of colonial subjectivity embedded in these early texts and examines how such narratives have historically shaped the anthropological sensibilities in the Indian region. By analyzing these Bengali writings through a decolonial lense, I aim to contribute to an alternative genealogy of anthropological thought in the Indian subcontinent. This approach not only questions anthropology’s development from Eurocentric timelines but also invites a rethinking of the field’s epistemic foundations.