Thomas R. Trautmann

Retreat and persistence of elephants -- Elephants and Indian kingship -- War elephants -- Structures of use: caturaga, vihana, vyha -- Elephant knowledge -- The spread of the war elephant -- North India, South India, Sri Lanka -- The Near East, North Africa, Europe -- Southeast Asia -- After the war elephant -- Drawing the balance, looking ahead

An Environmental History

Elephants and Kings

Maurice Godelier

Franklin Edmund Tjon Sie Fat

Exploring a classic topic, this bold new work demonstrates anew the centrality of kinship analysis to the anthropological endeavor. Book jacket.

Transformations of Kinship

A Statistical Investigation of the Authorship and Evolution of the Text

Kauṭilya and the Arthaśāstra

Dravidian Kinship

Kinship and History in South Asia presents four papers given at a small conference of kinship studies scholars, “Kinship and History in South Asia,” at the University of Toronto in 1973. They draw upon one another and show several common concerns, particularly the theoretical importance of Dravidian systems. Yey they remain specialist studies, each within its own raison d’être. Brendra E. F. Beck contributes a study of the “kinship nucleus” in Tamil folklore, Levi-Straussian both in its treatment of kinship and of mythology. George L. Hart’s study of woman and the sacred in the ancient Tamil literature of the Sangam attempts to elucidate this literature in its own terms, and also to relate it to Beck’s “kinship nucleus.” Thomas R. Trautmann presents a critical examination of the evidence for cross-cousin marriage in early North India, attempting to determine historical fact from literary materials. Narendra K. Wagle offers a survey of the kinship categories to be found in the Pali Jatakas.

Four Lectures

Kinship and History in South Asia

Part of the prestigious Debate series, this book brings together aa selection of pioneering essays. The introduction spells out the extremely topical Aryan debate. The central question behind this selection is, did the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans enter India from the Northwest in 1500 BC, or were they indigenous to India and identical with the people who inhabited the Indus Valley between 2800 and 1500 BC.

The Aryan Debate

Peter M. Whiteley

The “Crow-Omaha problem” has perplexed anthropologists since it was first described by Lewis Henry Morgan in 1871. During his worldwide survey of kinship systems, Morgan learned with astonishment that some Native American societies call some relatives of different generations by the same terms. Why? Intergenerational “skewing” in what came to be named “Crow” and “Omaha” systems has provoked a wealth of anthropological arguments, from Rivers to Radcliffe-Brown, from Lowie to Lévi-Strauss, and many more. Crow-Omaha systems, it turns out, are both uncommon and yet found distributed around the world. For anthropologists, cracking the Crow-Omaha problem is critical to understanding how social systems transform from one type into another, both historically in particular settings and evolutionarily in the broader sweep of human relations. This volume examines the Crow-Omaha problem from a variety of perspectives—historical, linguistic, formalist, structuralist, culturalist, evolutionary, and phylogenetic. It focuses on the regions where Crow-Omaha systems occur: Native North America, Amazonia, West Africa, Northeast and East Africa, aboriginal Australia, northeast India, and the Tibeto-Burman area. The international roster of authors includes leading experts in their fields. The book offers a state-of-the-art assessment of Crow-Omaha kinship and carries forward the work of the landmark volume Transformations of Kinship, published in 1998. Intended for students and scholars alike, it is composed of brief, accessible chapters that respect the complexity of the ideas while presenting them clearly. The work serves as both a new benchmark in the explanation of kinship systems and an introduction to kinship studies for a new generation of students. Series Note: Formerly titled Amerind Studies in Archaeology, this series has recently been expanded and retitled Amerind Studies in Anthropology to incorporate a high quality and number of anthropology titles coming in to the series in addition to those in archaeology.

New Light on a Classic Problem of Kinship Analysis

Crow-Omaha

India: A Brief History of a Civilization provides a brief overview of a very long period, allowing students to acquire a mental map of the entire history of Indian civilization in a short book. Most comprehensive histories devote a few chapters to the early history of India and an increasing number of pages to the more recent period, giving an impression that early history is mere background and that Indian civilization finds its fulfillment in the nation-state. Thomas R. Trautmann believes that the deep past lives on and is a valuable resource for understanding the present day and for creating a viable future. The result is a book that is short enough to read in a few sittings, but comprehensive in coverage - 5,000 years of India in brief.

Brief History of a Civilization

India

Lewis Henry Morgan of Rochester, New York, lawyer and pioneering anthropologist, was the leading American contributor of his generation to the social sciences. Among the classic works whose conjunction in the 1860s gave modern anthropology its shape, Morgan’s massive and technical Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family was decisive. Thomas R. Trautmann offers a new interpretation of the genesis of “kinship” and of the role it played in late nineteenth-century intellectual history. This Bison Books edition features a new introduction and appendices by the author.

Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship

A study of the discovery by Sir William Jones of the relationship of Sanskrit to the languages of Europe and Iran--the concept of the Indo-European language family.

The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras

Languages and Nations

In this landmark study, Thomas Trautmann delves into the intellectual accomplishments of the languages and nations concept in British India, as well as the darker politics of race hatred which emerged out of it. He challenges the racial hypothesis through a powerful analysis of the feeble evidence upon which it is based. Issued for the first time in paperback format, this edition includes a new Preface in which the author discusses further ideas on the understanding of the Aryan theory and the languages and nations project, as well as the new scholarship supporting such ideas. The new preface also discusses the Aryan debate in contemporary India, which looks for a link between Aryans, Sanskrit, the Veda and the Indus Valley Civilization, and which has in recent times broadened into a tremendously politicized controversy. A compelling and carefully researched work, Aryans and British India has become mandatory reading, since its first publication in 1997, for historians, political scientists and commentators, anthropologists, and linguists, as well as scholars and students of cultural studies.

Thomas R. Trautmann

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