What is Anthropology?
Despite being a serious student of Anthropology for almost 50 years, the question makes me uneasy. I must admit that I have not been able to pinpoint what Anthropology is not. That could have made my job easy. Here I start with some historical facts. 1. When Aristotle defined man as a “featherless biped walker” did he know he was defining the limits of Anthropology? 2. In Class 9 th or 10 th I had read a poem starting with the couplet: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man”. Doesn’t Alexander Pope, the poet, sound an Anthropologist? 3. Again, the same year, we had a poem by Tennyson on Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade which most of us must have read; I remember a few lines: “Canons to right of them Cannons to left of them Cannons in front of them ………… Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred” Now, is this Anthropology? “No” will be your standard reply. But, if I tell you that the l