Aryans and British India - Hardcover

Trautmann, Thomas R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520205464 ISBN 13: 9780520205468

Verlag: University of California Press, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Trautmann Thomas R

Über diesen Titel

Reseña del editor:

'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.

Contraportada:

""Aryans and British India is a seminal work and will be read and reread by serious students of Indian history for many generations."--Stanley Wolpert, author of "India

"This is a creative and venturesome rethinking of issues of race, language, and caste in the British colonial understanding of India."--Aram A. Yengoyan, University of California, Davis

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0520205464
• ISBN 13: 9780520205468
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 259