About the Book :
Few of the wilder parts of the
world preserve such a wide variety of savage tribes of such great ethnological
interest as the mountainous valley of the mighty Brahmaputra in its course from
Lowe Tibet to the Bay of Bengal. The observations published here relate to about
six hundred individuals belonging to over thirty different tribes and tribe
lets, and of each individual the author made twenty to thirty or more
measurements or other physical record. They afford, for the first time, exact
details of the physical types of most of the tribes of Assam and the Brahmaputra
Valley and also for the first time a systematic record of the colour of the skin
and eyes all of which data are comparable, in that they have all been collected
with scrupulous care by the same observer. The physical types are freely
illustrated by photographs taken mostly by the author himself. The text of the
book was originally published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in
1900. This edition as a separate book will go a long way in focusing attention
on this vital subject when a number of new studies are now being made on the
area covered.
About Author :
Waddell, Lawrence Augustine
(Later Austine) (1854-1938), Medical Officer in the Indian Government Service,
traveller, and orientalist, was born at Cumbernauld, Dumbartonshire, on May 29,
1854, the son of Thomas Clement Waddell, D.D., schoolmaster and author, by his
wife, Jean, youngest daughter of John Chapman, of Banton, Stirlingshire. For ten
years from 1885 he was Assistant Sanitary Commissioner and from 1888 to 1895 he
was Medical Officer for the Darjeeling District. From 1896 for six years he was
Professor of Chemistry and Pathology in the Calcutta Medical College, and for
four year editor of the Indian Medical Gazette. Interest in Buddhism, first
perhaps kindled by the time in Burma, led to Waddell explorations of sites in
the founder country, in particular of the ancient capital, Pãtaliputra, the
Palibothra of the Greeks, and the identification of Buddha birthplace, on the
Nepal border: also in the course of his military services on the North-Western
Frontier he acquired material for papers on the early Indo-Grecian Buddhist art
of Gandhara.
