William Jones (1746–94). Soon after this discovery, in 1813, scholars had
identiWed Sanskrit-speakers as Aryans (Chapter 8). This equation became
accepted as a truism in the second half of the nineteenth century. In India,
therefore, even prehistoric archaeologists could not escape the curiosity of
philologists and physical anthropologists who urged the former to research
into the past to discover the origins of the peoples who spoke Indo-European
languages in the area, the Aryans.
In India the link between archaeology and physical anthropology materi-
alized in research projects such as those commissioned by the Civil Service of
India to Herbert Hope Risley (1851–1911) in the 1880s. His aim was to deWne
and explain the geographical distribution of racial types. He did so system-
atically measuring a selected set of physical features of a sample of the
population. His research also had an impact on the understanding of prehis-
toric India. According to Risley, observation of the present was ‘the best guide
to the reconstruction of the past’ and this because Indian society was ‘in many
respects still primitive’, and it preserved, ‘like a palimpsest manuscript, sur-
vivals of immemorial antiquity’ (Risley in Chakrabarti 1997: 122). The
dolichocephalic (i.e. long skull) leptorrhine type was located in the Punjab
and the northwestern frontier of India and its members were regarded as ‘the
descendants of the invading Aryans of 3,000 years ago’ (in Chakrabarti 1997:
119). Risley believed he could see a progressive increase of the dolichocephalic
element in the population in the Ganges valley towards the ‘traditional Aryan
tract’ and considered the invading Aryans to have imposed the caste system.
The racial division was both geographically, and socially, distributed. He
maintained that the more modern Aryan element prevailed in the upper
end of the caste system whereas at its lower end the previous Dravidian
component predominated. The oldest inhabitants of India—i.e. those of
lower castes—were ‘recognisable at a glance by his black skin, his squat
Wgure and the Negro-like proportions of his nose’ (in Chakrabarti 1997).
Racial impurity could be explained by past population dynamics and this
was employed as a justiWcation for imperialism and foreign rule. As Risley
explained in 1908:
The invaders, however great their strength, could bring relatively few women in their
train. This indeed is the determining factor both of the ethnology and the history of
India. As each wave of conquerors... That entered the country by land became more
or less absorbed in the indigenous population, their physique degenerated, their
individuality vanished, their energy was sapped, and dominion passed from their
hands into those of more vigorous successors. Ex Occidente Imperium; the genius of
empire in India has come to her from the West; and can be maintained only by
constant infusions of fresh blood from the same source.
(in Chakrabarti 1997: 128).Archaeology of the Primitive 299