Introduction

Much water has flown down the Ganges, ever since the ‘founding fathers’ of the discipline of anthropology, who were mostly amateurs, wrote their monumental books during the second half of the nineteenth century, and firmly established anthropology as a scientific discipline. It is interesting to note that when the discipline of anthropology was in its nascent form in Europe, people did not define anthropology; instead, they sarcastically defined anthropologists. And anthropologists were considered those ‘who made gossip about themselves’. Such a satirical remark about the founding fathers of the discipline of the ‘Science of Man’ was not without any reason. During the period of exploration-cum-colonisation, more specifically, after the discovery of the New World in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, and discoveries of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and hundreds of Islands of the Pacific; as also, of the interior parts of Africa, a huge amount of literature about the physical, social, and cultural aspects of the ‘natives’ or the ‘indigenous peoples’ of these newly discovered lands had been accumulated. In those days, there remained fierce competition among several European nations, such as England, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, to discover new lands on this vast planet, hoist their national flag first, and thus establish new colonies there. No sooner had the colonies been declared by any of these nations than the missionaries began to flock to such lands to proselytise the natives. During this period, the explorers, the travellers, the missionaries, and the colonial administrators wrote large number of books and articles on the bizarre customs, religious beliefs, rituals, and practices, and many other aspects of social-cultural life of the indigenous people, whom they first encountered. Thus, a huge amount of ‘exotic’ literature of the so-called ‘savage’ societies was already in store in Europe. The genesis of anthropology lies in such ‘exotic’ and so-called ‘savage’ literature of the aboriginal peoples of these newly discovered lands.