HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on Richard Burton’s ethnological explorations in the Sindh region (West India, now in Pakistan).

Boivin, Michel, 2024. “Richard Francis Burton in Sindh: From Orientalism to Ethnology as a Primary Source of Knowledge of India”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

British explorer, polymath and polyglot Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) is best known for his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1853 disguised as a Persian merchant, for his explorations of East Africa and the Great Lakes region, and for the clash with his associate in the 1857–1859 expedition, John H. Speke (1827–1864), who claimed to be the actual discoverer of the source of the Nile. A distinguished, albeit scandalous member of learned societies, indeed one of the founders of the Anthropological Society of London who participated in the anthropological debates of his time (in particular, the polygenism vs. monogenism debate), Burton was a prolific writer. With over 40 volumes published in different countries, he wrote in to different genres, from travelogues to literary, historical, and ethnological essays within and beyond Orientalism. In addition, he translated works such as the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra. He was a diplomat for about thirty years in different parts of the world: Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Europe. A Victorian maverick par excellence, he remains a controversial figure, albeit generally absent from the histories of anthropology. In this article, Boivin (Centre for South Asian and Himalayan Studies, CNRS-EHESS, Paris) focuses on Burton’s less-known seven-year stay (1842–1849) in the Sindh region (West India, now in Pakistan), after having been expelled from Oxford University. A careful reading of Burton’s writings on India provides evidence that he was one of the architects of the transition from Orientalism to ethnology as the primary source of knowledge about India. As an officer in the East India Company army during that period, he acquired a command of several local languages, including Hindustani, Gujarati, Marathi, Sindhi and Punjabi. In addition, he collected fieldwork data, which he published in five books. As an ethnologist, as he called himself, he provided detailed descriptions of the populations of the Sindh region. He proposed one of the first analyses of the social organization of these populations, identifying that the dual principle of purity and impurity prevailed in the acquisition of status in the social hierarchy. A distant forerunner of functionalism, he observed that professional activity most often grants status. Last but not least, he also showed that religious affiliation, particularly adherence to Islam, did not bring this distribution into question.

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