UNIT.

II EARLY THOUGHT

1. EVOLUTION – EDWARD TYLOR AND L.H. MORGAN

Evolutionism proposed the “psychic unity of mankind”, which argues that all human beings
share psychological traits that make them equally likely to innovate. In the early years of
anthropology, Darwinism had a strong impact on its theory. The prevailing view was that
culture generally develops (or evolves) in a uniform and progressive manner, just as Darwin
argued species did. It was thought that most societies pass through the same series of stages,
to arrive ultimately at a common end. The sources of culture change were generally assumed
to be embedded within the culture from the beginning, and therefore the ultimate course of
development was thought to be internally determined. Two 19 th century anthropologists
whose writings exemplified the theory that culture generally evolves uniformly and
progressively were Edward B. Tylor (1832 – 1917) and Lewis Henry Morgan (1818 – 1881).

CONTRIBUTION OF TYLOR (1832 – 1917)

Tylor is considered as the founding father of British Anthropology. He maintained that
culture evolved from the simple to the complex. Central to Tylor’s contribution is his
definition of culture. In his major work Primitive Culture he defines culture as “that complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of the society”.

Tylor in his work Primitive Culture sets out to reconstruct the history of human culture. He
crafted his reconstruction on two principles: uniformitarianism and the concept of survivals.
According to him, culture was created by universally similar human minds and governed by
the same laws of cognition. Hence the condition of culture among the various societies of
mankind is capable of being investigated on general principles. Tylor’s key point is that the
processes of culture are similar for all the people regardless of where and when they lived
because human minds are similar. This is the central logic of Tylor’s uniformitarianism.

This has three implications. Firstly, race does not explain cultural differences. Tylor believed
there was a kind of psychic unity among all peoples that explained parallel evolutionary
sequences in different cultural traditions. In other words, because of the basic similarities
common to all peoples, different societies often find the same solutions to the same problems
independently. If two societies have similar cultural traits, it could be independent inventions
developed due to the similarly constructed human minds encountering similar situations. But
Tylor also noted that cultural traits may spread from one society to another by simple
diffusion – the borrowing by one culture of a trait belonging to another as a result of contact
between the two.

Secondly, it means that societies with similar cultural traits may represent analogous stages in
the development of human culture. “Progress” was therefore possible for all. To account for
cultural variation, Tylor and other early evolutionists postulated that different contemporary
societies were at different stages of evolution. According to this view, the “simpler” peoples
of the day had yet not reached “higher” stages.

Thirdly Tylor’s uniformitarianism allowed him to reconstruct the specific processes leading
to a set of cultural knowledge. This reconstruction of evolution of human culture relied on the
comparative method and the doctrine of survivals. The comparative method is based on the
logic that similar objects are historically related. Tylor defines survivals as processes,
customs, opinions, etc. which have been carried by force of habit into a new state of society
different from that in which they had their original home. They remain as proofs and
examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer one has evolved. For eg
saying God bless you when someone sneezes even though we do not believe that the soul is
leaving the body. Thus, survivals are not merely customs, but are the vestiges of previous
culture. It helps the ethnographer to reconstruct earlier cultural patterns and ultimately define
the evolution of culture. Similarly entire societies may reflect earlier stages of evolution.

CONTRIBUTION OF MORGAN (KINSHIP AND EVOLUTION) (1818 – 1881)

Another 19th century proponent of uniform and progressive cultural evolution was Lewis
Henry Morgan. The American, Lewis Henry Morgan, infuriated his British Contemporaries,
when his research demonstrated that social change involved both independent invention and
diffusion. He agreed with British sociocultural anthropologists that human progress was due
to independent innovation, but his work on kinship terminology showed that diffusion
occurred among geographically dispersed people.

A lawyer in upstate New York, Morgan became interested in the local Iroquois Indians and
defended their reservation in a land-grant case. In gratitude, the Iroquois adopted Morgan. In
his best-known work, Ancient Society, Morgan postulated several sequences in the evolution
of human culture. Rather than solely document the folklore of the Iroquois, Morgan began to
explore the relationships between different societies as reflected in shared systems of kinship
and to explore their progressive changes as man developed through the ages of barbarism.
Morgan argued that all kinship systems can be divided into two large groups – descriptive
systems and classificatory system. Descriptive systems distinguish between lineal relatives
and collateral relatives and collateral kin. In contrast, classificatory system treats lineal and
collateral kins. According to Morgan, the difference between classificatory and descriptive
kinship system marks the distinction between the uncivilized and civilized.

For example, he speculated that the family evolved through six stages. Human society began
as a “horde living in promiscuity,” with no sexual prohibitions and no real family structure.
Next was a stage in which a group of brothers was married to a group of sisters and brother,
sister mating was permitted. In the third stage, group marriage was practiced, but brothers
and sisters were not allowed to mate. The fourth stage was characterized by a loosely paired
male and female who still lived with other. Then came the husband-dominant family, in
which the husband could have more than one wife simultaneously. Finally, the stage of
civilization was distinguished by the monogamous family, with just one wife and one
husband who were relatively equal in status.

For Morgan, the terms savagery, barbarian and civilization represented well defined stages of
progress measured by four sets of cultural achievements. (1) inventions and discoveries (2)
the idea of government (3) the organization of family and (4) the concept of private property.
Based on these factors Morgan divided each stage into ‘Lower Status’, ‘Middle Status’ and
‘Upper Status’.

Evolutionism also influenced another branch of anthropological theory; one that posited that
the reason human cultures differed in their behaviours was because they represented separate
subspecies of humans, or “races”. This idea was also influenced by the fact that, by the 19 th
century at least, it became clear that few cultures were being “civilized” in the way
Europeans expected. Rather than attribute this to the strength of cultural tradition, some
attributed it to the innate capabilities of the people – in other words, to their “race”. Members
of “uncivilized races” were, by their very nature, incapable of being “civilized”. Such ideas
were widely held and supported during the later 19th and 20th centuries and, as we shall see,
American anthropology played a large role in showing that “race” theory was unsupported in
a variety of contexts. Unfortunately, “race” theory persists in some disciplines.

CRITICAL EVALUATION-
The evolutionism of Tylor, Morgan and others of the 19 th century is largely rejected today.
For one thing, their theories cannot satisfactorily account for cultural variation.

The “psychic unity of mankind” or “germs of thought” that were postulated to account for
parallel evolution cannot also account for cultural differences. Another weakness in the early
evolutionist theories is that they cannot explain why some societies have regressed or even
become extinct. Finally, although other societies have progressed to “civilization”, some of
them have not passed through all the stages. Thus, early evolutionist theory cannot explain
the details of cultural evolution and variation as anthropology now knows them.

2. HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM – FRANZ BOAS

INTRODUCTION-
Franz Boas shaped the direction of the 20th C., American Anthropology. He played a pivoted
role in moving anthropology into academia, in establishing associations and journals, and by
creating essential networks of institutional support from the public, policy makers and other
scientists. He had a wide interest spanning from biological anthropology to linguistics. He
argued that cultural trait must be explained in terms of specific cultural context rather than by
broad reference to the general evolutionary trends.

BACKGROUNDS-
Boas is known as the founder of American Anthropology, he was born in Northwestern
Germany into a prosperous Jewish family which was progressive in education and politics.
Boas was educated in his hometown and geography in a string of universities. He received
his doctorate in 1881 at the age of 23. His stay in Arctic had a profound influence on shifting
his views to behaviour of human beings. Over the years he had received his experience
through various institutes including Clark University, Chicago’s field museum followed by
Smithonia’s Bureau of American ethnology, Columbia College and National academy of
science.
Boas authored six books and more than seven hundred articles, his bibliography record his
diverse research. Boas made major contribution in the study of language. He was an early
critic of Nazism.

HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM (THE INTEGRATION OF CULTURE)-

Boas opinions evolved over course of his career his most consistent position was that the
cultures were integrated wholes produced by specific historical process rather than universal
evolution. He was a great critique of evolutionary framework and comparative method. Boas
argued that comparative approaches Morgan and Tylor undercut the following three forms:
1. The assumption of unilinear evolution.
2. The notion of modern society as evolutionary survivals.
3. The classification of societies on weak data and inappropriate criteria.

These flaws were the main target of Boas attack. Boas dismissed the evolutionary framework
of Morgan, Tylor and others as untested and untestable.

Boas undercut the entire the entire basis of 19th century cultural evolution. We might agree
with Tylor and Morgan that certain technological processes have an inherent evolutionary
order – fire must precede pottery making, flintlocks were invented before automatic rifles but
there is no ethnographic evidence to proof that matrilineal kin system preceded patrilineal kin
system or that religion based on animism developed before polytheistic religion. Boas argued
that this unilineal ordering is a simple assumption and there is no proven historical
relationship or any way to prove such a relationship. Thus evolutionary frameworks were
unproven assumptions which was imposed on data and not theories derived from
ethnographic data.

Boas argued that unilineal classification of different societies assumed that different societies
with similar cultural patterns were at similar evolutionary levels. On the contrary, he believed
that very similar cultural practices may arise from different causes. Anthropology’s primary
task, according to Boas, was to provide “a penetrating analysis of unique culture describing
its form, the dynamic reactions of the individual to culture and of culture of culture to the
individual”.
Boas’s early experience on Baffin Island led him to stick to his anthropological career. The
conclusion of the study showed Boas that: Geography plays only a limiting role.

Example: The Changing Economic life of Alaska Eskimos

Alaska Eskimos hand an economic base mainly dependent on hunting of marine mammals or
of inland caribou. European whaling became an important factor in the area from about 1850
to 1900 and many Eskimos participated in this activity. It was a kind of “Golden Age” in
which Eskimos culture became adjunct to the European whalebone coast industry. When
whaling dwindled Eskimos rifles decimated caribou herds.

As a new basis of Eskimos livelihood they got from 1892 – 1902 imported 1,300 Siberian
reindeers for reindeer herding. Eskimo groups learned the new techniques with remarkable
rapidity. By 1931 Alaska had over million reindeer. An abortive government experiment in
making herds “communal” brought about their decimation, as Eskimos lapsed once more
secretly, into hunting reindeer, which they no longer regarded as their own. Today there are
about 25,000 reindeer. The Eskimos still hunt marine animals and continue to be
predominantly meat eaters.

The cultural sequence summarizes the partial shift of these Eskimos from “hunting” to
“herding”. Boas didn’t reject the existence of general laws of human behaviour, but believed
that those laws can only be derived from an understanding of specific historical processes.

We agree that there are certain laws which govern the growth of human culture and we try to
discover these laws. The object of our investigation is to find the processes by which various
stages of culture have developed. The object of our research is not to study customs and
beliefs. We desire to learn the reasons why such customs and beliefs exist in other word we
wish to discover the history of their development.

A detailed study of custom and its bearing on total culture of the tribe practicing them in
context of their geographical distribution among neighboring tribes, facilitate us to determine
in the historical causes that led to formation of the customs under study and the psychological
processes that were at work in their development. The result of inquiry may be three fold.
1. They may reveal the environmental condition which have created or modified
elements. (adaption).
 2. They may clear up psychological factors which are at work in shaping culture.
(Psychological factors).
3. They may bring before our eyes the effects that historical connections have had upon
the growth of the culture (Historical factors).

Thus, Boas suggests that law like generalizations can be based on adaptational, psychological
or historical factors, but only if it’s documented by well-established ethnographic cases.
Franz Boas summed that the comparative method and historical method (if he uses so) have
been struggling for supremacy for a long time, but one may hope that soon they will find its
appropriate place and function. The Historical method has failed wherever similarities of
culture are found. The comparative method has been remarkably barren of definite results
and it can become fruitful only when we construct a uniform systematic history of the
evolution of culture. The solid work is still before us.

CRITICISM:
Boas demolished the evolutionary framework, provided methodologies for investigating
specific culture. He hinted at the relationship between individual and society, cultural
elements and cultural wholes but he could never answer how cultures became integrated
wholes.
Boas remarkably studied human society and his influence was felt for decades later as many
of his students turned their attention to key nexus of Boas, the relation between the individual
and society.

3. FUNCTIONALISM – MALINOWSKI’S THEORY OF NEED

INTRODUCTION-
Sociological and anthropological theory has been profoundly influenced by functional
analysis. Its history can be traced consensus universal is; Spencer’s organic analogy, Pareto’s
conception of society as a system of equilibrium and Durkheim’s casual function analysis.

The term ‘Functionalism’ cannot be explained easily for the simple reason that the term
‘function’ and ‘functional’ have been used to different things by different thinkers. The
functional approach is much older in biology, psychology and cultural anthropology than
sociology. Earlier, the term ‘function’ was commonly used in a positive sense of contribution
made by a part for the whole. Today it is used to mean ‘consequences’ which may or may not
be intended or recognized.

Functionalism in anthropology is generally divided into two schools of thought, each

associated with key personality. Psychological functionalism is linked to Bronislaw
Malinowski (1884 – 1942). Malinowski’s method was based on extensive in-depth fieldwork
during which he gathered evidence to support his theoretical position.

The second school, structural functionalism, is associated with A.R. Radcliffe Brown (1881 –
1955). He sought to understand how cultural institutions maintained the equilibrium and
cohesion of a society.

BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI (1884 – 1942)-

Malinowski is considered as one of the founding fathers of British Social Anthropology. He
was trained in physical sciences and received a Ph.D in physics and mathematics in 1908. He
was influenced by Durkheim and Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig. In 1910 he studied
anthropology at London School of Economics. Later at LSE he trained many of the finest
English Anthropologists including E.E. Evans – Pritchard, Isaac Schapera, Raymond Firth,
Fortes and Nadel, etc. He built the anthropological program at LSE and Cambridge.

Malinowski was interested in religion and folklore. He breached the boundary between
fieldworks through his fieldwork evolution. His famous books are: Argonauts of the Western
Pacific (1922) and Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927).

Malinowski’s concept of culture was most stimulating contribution to the anthropological

thought of his day but his contribution has been under-valued. His ethnographic concerns
were with how culture met the needs of the individual.

It contradicted with the view of A.R. Radcliffe Brown who emphasized how culture met the
needs of society. In order to understand this difference and to evaluate Malinowski’s
contribution one must begin with his theory of needs.

THEORY OF NEEDS-
Malinowski’s theory of need is central to his functional approach to culture. Through his
theory he tried to link the individual and society. According to him culture exists to meet the
basic biological, psychological and social needs of the individual.

Malinowski viewed function in physiological sense. He defined function as the satisfaction of

an organic impulse by the appropriate act. He developed his physiological analogy further.
For e.g. he argued that if we have to describe how normal lung operates we would be
describing the form of the process, but if we attempt to explain why the lung is operating in a
manner then we are concerned with its function.

Malinowski wrote that cultural institutions are integrated responses to a variety of needs and
to outline those needs he used a variant of his synoptic chart.

Basic needs Cultural responses

Metabolism Commissarial
Reproduction Kinship
Bodily comfort Shelter
Safety Protection
Movement Activities
Growth Training
Health Hygiene

Malinowski described each of these needs and cultural responses in detail, but few examples
are as follows:

The first human need, “metabolism” refers to (a) the process of food intake, (b) digestion, (c)
the collateral secretions, (d) the absorption of nutritive substances, and (e) the rejection of
waste matter.

The cultural response “commissarial” (the military unit that supplies food to an army)
include.
1. How food was grown, prepared and consumed.
2. Where food was consumed and in what social unit.
3. The economic and social organization of distributing food.
 4. The legal and customary rule for food distribution.
5. The authority that enforces those rules.

The basic need, safety, simply “refers to the prevention of bodily injuries by mechanical
accident, attack from the animals or other human beings” but the cultural response,
protection, may include different behaviour as placing houses on piling away from potential
tidal waves the organization of armed responses to aggression, or the magical recruitment of
supernatural forces.

And growth- which in human is structured by long dependency of the infants – leads to the
cultural response of training by which humans are taught language, other symbols and
appropriate behaviour for different stages and situations are instructed until mature.

Malinowski summarized his theory of need with two axioms.

1. Every culture must satisfy the biological systems of needs.
2. Every cultural achievement that implies use of artifacts and symbols, enhance human
anatomy and thus directly or indirectly satisfies bodily needs.

In short, culture is utilitarian, adaptive and functionally integrated and explanation of culture
involves the delineation of function. A classic example of Malinowski’s approach to magic.

THE FUNCTION OF MAGIC-

Magic was an integral element to Malinowski’s theory because magic was central to
Trobriand life. Magic was used to kill enemies and prevent one being killed, to ease birth of a
child, to enhance beauty of a dancer to protect fisherman or to ensure harvest. Magic always
appeared in those phases of human action where knowledge fails man.

Malinowski argued that magic has a profound function in exerting human control over those
dimensions that are otherwise outside of our control. Primitive man cannot manipulate the
weather. Experience teaches him that rain and sunshine, wind, heat and cold cannot be
produced by his own hands, however much he might think about or observe such
phenomenon. He therefore deals with them magically. He hypnotized that limited scientific
knowledge of illness and disease led “primitive” man to conclude that illness is caused by
sorcery and countered by magic.
Magic is organized in fishing too. No magic is practiced when it’s possible to make a catch in
weather and under condition. In which no other kind of fishing is practiced. In contrast, the
magic is associated with ocean fishing, sailing and canoes is complex and pervasive, because
the danger and risks are greater.

Garden magic is public, direct and extensive, the village garden magician is either the
headman, his heir, or the closest male relative, and therefore he is either the most important
or next most important person in a community. Magic is as indispensable to the success of
garden as competent and effective husbandry. It is essential to the fertility of the soil. The
garden magic utters magic by mouth, the magical virtue enters the soil. Magic is to them an
almost natural element in the growth of the gardens.

Malinowski believed that the essential function of magic an attempt to extend control over
the uncontrollable elements of nature. In this sense, his analysis of magic reflects his
functional approach to culture.

PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTION-
Malinowski’s psychological functionalism is represented by “The Essential of the Kula” in
Chapter 3 of his ethnography, Argonants of the western pacific (1922). In this Malinowski
offers a description of trade in Kula. This chapter showcases Malinowski’s skill as an
ethnographer and also illustrates many of his fundamental ideas.

Example: The Kula exchange of Trobriand islanders. Malinowski’s classic case of the Kula
relates to an exchange of ceremonial goods among a series of ethnically different
communities at east end of the New Guinea and on the adjacent island groups. This form
geographically a rough “ring”. On every island and in every village, a more or less limited
number of men take part in the Kula – that is to say, receive the goods, hold them for a short
time, and then pass them on. Therefore every man who is in Kula, periodically though not
regularly, receives one or several Ynawli (arm-shells), or a Soulava (necklace of red shell
discs), He then had to hand it on to one of his partners, from whom he receives the opposite
commodity or exchange. Thus no man ever keeps any of his articles for any length of time in
his possession. The partnership between the two men is a permanent and lifelong affair. And
any given Ynawli and Soulava is always found travelling and changing hands and there is no
question of its ever settling down. Thus, the principle “once in a Kula, always in a Kula”
applies also to the valuable themselves.

Kula exchange in Southeast New Guinea- Objects ceremonially exchanged are armlets made
of spiral tronchus shell and necklaces primarily of pink spondylus shell discs. After
Malinowski surrounded by elaborate social and magical activities of traditional character, the
transactions are called “Kula”. The ceremonial exchange of articles like arm shells and
necklaces is the fundamental aspect of Kula, but side by side the natives carry on ordinary
trade, bartering from one island to another. Thus “Kula ring” ties all these people by way of
such ceremonial gift between neighbors into a system of mutual relationships.

Kula activities tend to penetrate all aspects of their life: visiting, feasts, religious activities,
the status of Kin groups, art, display and individuals, opportunities for trade. An inquiry,
therefore into the function of the Kula i.e. what it does, calls for an examination of its total
meaning and content as regards each of the culture concerned and also the intellectual
relations involved,

CRTICISM-
Malinowski’s work has been criticized on numerous grounds. His theory is considered as a
rude theory in which all sorts of behaviour are reduced to simplistic notion of utility.

4. COLONIAL ANTHROPOLOGY – VERRIER ELVIN’S METHODS OF A

FREELANCE ANTHROPOLOGIST

Dr. Verrier Elwin’s popularity with the ordinary reader has probably suffered because of his
high reputation as an anthropologist; anthropology being associated with eight hundred pages
of small type and smaller photographs, each duller than the last – Reviewer in the Illustrated
weekly of India, 31 July 1955.An earlier version of this essay was published in The Journal
of the Royal Anthropological Institute [IRAI], vol. 4, no. 2, June 1998. Republished here by
permission of the IRAI.

While the trajectory of Elwin’s life was marked by a series of departures, the pattern of his
writing career was shaped by his time in oxford. In his college, Merton, he came under the
influence of two mentors of quite different persuasions (cf. Elwin 1964: 19 – 24). The first
was his English teacher H.W. Garrod, an authority on Keats and Wordsworth and a bachelor
who played chess and drank with under – graduates. The second was his theology teacher
F.W. Green, who had once been a slum priest in London’s east end: he was also a radical in
politics who deplored the excesses of capitalism and imperialism without going quite so far
as to call himself a socialist.

Between 1936, and 1939 the London publisher John Murray brought out, each year, a book
by Elwin. Leaves was followed by Phulmat of the hills (Elwin 1937), a novel about a tribal
beauty stricken by leprosy and abandoned by her lover. The narrative is replete with poems,
riddles and stories from tribal folklore, interspersed with straight dialogue. This is an early
‘ethnographic novel’, its plot held together by the focus on the fate of its central character. In
the next year Elwin published another novel about tribal witches and witchcraft that is less
convincing.

A generous tribute to Elwin’s tribal diary and novels was offered in the journal Man by the
first Indian Anthropologist of any stature Sarat Chandra Roy. Leaves from the jungle and the
Phulmat of the hills, wrote Roy, provided ‘vivid glimpses of Gond life’. Written with
‘intimate knowledge and deep sympathy’, they showed how successfully the writer had
sought ‘to identify himself in spirit with the state of soul – evolution of the people he
studies’. Something of the same spirit is also present in Elwin’s first work of ethnography.
This was The Bagia, published in 1939, a massive monograph about a tiny tribe of swidden
cultivators whose economy was being destroyed by the state, and who had been forced, much
against their will, to take to the plough.

‘The pen is the chief weapon with which I fight for my poor’, wrote Elwin to an Italian friend
in July 1938, while completing The Baiga. That book was the first in a series of
ethnographies and essays through which Elwin fought for his poor, the voiceless tribal. While
his colleague Shamrao Hivale focused on social work (cf. Elwin 1964: 105 – 6), Elwin
conducted fieldwork in many districts of the present day Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and
Orissa. Between 1940 and 1942 he lived in Bastar, a large isolated and heavily forested
chiefdom with a predominantly tribal population. From 1943 to 1948 he spent several months
each year in the uplands of the eastern province of Orissa. Anthropologist at large, roaming
through the forests in search of tribes to study and to protect, Elwin accumulated a huge store
of facts, poems and stories that found their way into a series of weighty but always readable
monographs.

Of all these books, it was those on the Baiga and the Muria that attracted the most attention.
Both the studies drew on the intimacy which came from the long residence with the tribe;
both showcased vivid life histories borne of the novelist’s interest in the character over social
structure; both challenged criticism with their bulk, each book running to more than 600
pages; and both, were lightened by literary allusions, the author being as likely to invoke
Shakespeare or Blake as Malinowski or Firth. More pertinent than any of these reasons for
the books’ fame (and notoriety) was their documentation and indeed joyous celebration of
sex in the life of tribes.

Ancient India was rich in sexological literature remarked Elwin, but recent writers ‘have
generally been too much under the influence of the prevailing Puritan conventions to treat the
subject freely’. Science called him to break the taboo, for the Baiga, he found, were ruled not
so much by the forest guard and the police constable as by the raging fires of sexual desire. In
their lives ‘celibacy is unheard of, continence is never practiced’. Their children were
apparently born with a complete equipment of phallic knowledge. Baiga knowledge of each
other’s bodies was extraordinarily attentive to detail: the men for instance, could distinguish
between twelve kinds of breasts, ranking them (almost) in precise order of attractiveness.
Even Baiga gali, or abuse, was rich in sexual aggressiveness.

THE METOHDS OF A FREELANCE ANTHROPOLOGIST-

‘You cannot observe mankind from the howdah of an elephant’, remarks Elwin in the preface
to one of his early books, ‘there is no substitute for field work. There is no substitute for life
in the village, among the people, staying in village houses, and enduring the physical distress
as well as the possible misunderstandings that may arise’. He speaks here in the voice of
Malinowski, the man who made intensive fieldwork the differentia specifica of social
anthropology, the research method which moved the discipline beyond the casual inquiries of
the colonial official or missionary and the library based speculations of Frazer and his ilk.
Indeed, the statement just quoted is prefaced by a swipe at some younger Indian scholars,
among whom Elwin noticed a ‘tendency to scamp personal investigation on the spot, to make
brief visits of a fortnight or less to a district and then write about it, to conduct inquiries from
the veranda of a government rest house.
No one could accuse Elwin of this: he lived for long periods among the people he wrote
about. His first ethnographies, on the Baiga and munities were closely linked to the Mandla
Gonds with whom he made his home. While his Bastar and Orrisa researches were based on
careful prior planning there too he lived with the tribals. He wrote in his memoirs: For me
anthropology did not mean field work, it meant my whole life. My method was to settle down
among the people, live with them, share their life as far as an outsider could and generally do
several books together…. ‘This meant that I did not depend merely on asking questions, but
knowledge of the people gradually sank in till it was a part of me’. However, Elwin’s
research methods are to be distinguished from those of his professional peers in at least two
ways. Where, from Malinowski onwards, the anthropologist has laid great stress on ‘speaking
like a native’, it was only in his early studies that Elwin could dispense with interpreter. The
Baiga and the Agaria spoke the one Indian language he himself had familiarity with, the
Chhatisgarhi dialect of Hindi. But elsewhere as in Orissa, he had sometimes to use two sets
of interpreters, one to translate from the tribal language to Oriya, the second to render Oriya
into English or Hindi – a process in which meaning and nuance would have been lost in
translation. It is true that he ranged over a large territory and encountered dozens of different
communities, but it must also be acknowledged that he was a poor linguist. Again, while
studying a tribe Elwin liked to make numerous visits of a few weeks each, spread out over
several years and many villages, in preference to the single site continuous fieldwork more
typical of the professional anthropologists.

The lack of discipline characteristic of his field methods also spills over into his books, for
Elwin was a marvelously evocative but undisciplined writer, quite unable to subedit himself.
Perhaps the essay or pamphlet was the genre best suited to his skills, bringing out, as it did,
his gift for vivid metaphors and comparisons and his polemical edge, while masking a lack of
ability to sustain or structure an argument over the length of a monograph. Considered strictly
as literary products, his two most satisfactory books are Leaves from the jungle (1936) and
The tribal world of Verrier Elwin (1964). Both these books are primarily about him, and he
was a special character. By contrast, his ethnographic works, about other people and other
contexts, all contain a huge store of original information not always presented in the most
coherent or convincing manner.
Behind these rich but unwieldly books lie the contending claims of literature and science. On
the one side, his monographs are enlivened by the sharp characterizations of a novelist,
exemplified in the evocative life histories and the abundance of songs, riddles and poems.

Where other anthropologists emphasized the functional interrelatedness of all parts of a social
system, Elwin liked to highlight one key trait or institution which for him defined the essence
of a culture – be it bewar or swidden cultivation for the Baiga or the Ghotul for the Muria.