BLOOI)oGI%OUP DISTRIBUTIOIW I N IA~IDIA WIT.

El
SPECIAL BEF]~I~ENCE TO BENGAL

~BY E I L E E N W. EI%LANSON 3,[AC]~AI{LANE ~

(With One Text-figure)

T~E Hirsohfelds discovered during the World War that the highest
percentage of blood group B (or i-J)existed among the native ]nclia,n
troops. Unfortunately, they lumped together all the data from Gurkha,s,
Garowahs, Jars, t(umaons and I{ajputs with that from tow-caste people
from all over India who were in the Labour Transport Corps (!\{alone&
Lahiri) and called the lot " I n d i a n s " . Because the sample was ~'aoiallv
heterogeneous the ola,ssioaI Hirsohfe]d data, are of little value anthro/o-
logically, although they served to di, a,w attention to India as a possible
locale of the mutation which prodlleed a.gglutinogen B.
Further misa.pprgbension ,'egai~ding the Hh'sohfeld data was caused
by 0ttenburg (192.,_'2., 192.5), who republis~aed them as " H i n d u s " In
America and in the continent of }gurope the term Hindu is still used in
its older connotation of " N a t i v e of H i n d u s t a n ' . Elsewhere Hindu now
signifies a Ieligious gxoup, followers of Bra.}}minism. Undel' mode~'n usage
it is as inaccurate to call the Indian. Sepoys Hindus as it would be to
oalI ~he American Doughboys P~otestants.
Nothing more was published on Indian blood groups for ten years,
when a comprehensive study by 3ialone & Lahiri appeared. They ex-
amined a large number of people belonging to three of the six Indian
racial types of Risley (1915). Over 300 Turko-iranians ~'epresented by
Baluehis, Hazaras z and Yadlans were tested ~¥om among ~he Indian
troops at Quetta. h-early 500 Indo-Arya,ns from the Punjab belonging
to the Jats, Khatris and ~ a j p u t s were selected from the patients at the
Pasteur Institute, Kasauli. The data for each of these six ethnic groups
were, kept distinct, but it would have been better if the different castes
J

and sects had also been treated separatelJk.

l~ialone & Lahiri also recorded the blood-group distribution hJ a mixed
group of 589 aborigines from Chota l~agpur, Behar, belonging to the
~iunda, Santal and Uraon t~Jbes whic]~ they classified as "D:~'avidians"
These subjects were pfJsoneJ.'s or tea-garden coolies. Bloods fl~om a
J Oo]]abora.tm.in Asiatic I3csea.roh,University of ~lichiga~L U.S.A.
z The 1-Ia.zara.s]~avc a. considm'ab]eamount of B:longo]blood.
Jonrn. of 61ezm~icsxxxvi ]5
226 BIood-(g'ro~6lJ
D,fst'rih'~io~~ ~~ I~d~:ct
large sample of over two thousand people from the Unfi:ed Prox'inces
belonging to various Hindu castes were also tested, it, is to be regretted
that the doctors failed to keep d~stJncg the data for different tribes e:nd
castes in the l~st two lots, especially after they had m:iti.cized the Hirseh-
t%1ds %r lumping ~oged~er data from several races. Hindu society is
endogamous in varying degrees within the caste, and miscegenation is
rare in. most regions. _Naoh caste is therefore a biological strain differing
more or less from the others, iror a true picture of Iudia,n blood-group
dist.ribudon adequate tmmixed samples from many of" the numerotls
castes and tribes are needed from each provhme. To obviate the eft'eeL
of a preponderance of certai~ blood groups within, a family Nalone &
Lahiri examined no more than one member from a fami]y.
Another record that loses v a h s because of heterogeneity is that of
Bais& Yerhoef (1928) for Tamil tea-g~rden coolies in Sumatra. These
data h~ws been. quoted and republished as "tIindus Southern" (Wiener).
The people were natives of various purls of South India and Ceylon and
belonged to several low-caste and untouchable strains. Tl~ese an.there
call a~tention, to the d~fferenees in blood-group proportions between the
Tami] "Dravidians" and the ':Dravidians" of Malone & Lah iri. They
believe that the Tamils are more like the Indo-Afghan people sero-
logica.lly than any other Dravidians.
In t,he past three years there has been greater activity in this field,
and dat~ 5ave been obtained from several regions and races. The records
to the beginning of 1938 are given in Tables I and II and in the P~efer~
ences, India ofi'ers one of the richest ~elds for anthropological serology,
and the data are st-ill meagre.

P~.~ciar, coXn'Amso~~
The biochemical index A
B ++ABAB was proposed, by ths Hirsehfelds as
a means of comparing different races with regards to blood-group
distribution, tIirschfeld postulated only two genes concerned with
isoagglutinogen formation. Subsequently Bernst, ein's hypothesis of
three allelomorpbs A, 13 and R has been s~J)stantiated aLd the fre-
quencies of these genes, p, cI and r, are now preferred to give a picture
of comparative conditions (Wiener),
The frequencies of A and B (p and q) have been plotted for twenty
of the least heterogeneous Indian records and the figures hawe been
arranged roughIy in descending values of B in Fig. l. The highest values
for g are shown by the Todas of the Nilgiri tIills (Pandit) and by the