Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras

Forming a pair with the classic, Aryans and British India, this pioneering work examines the phenomenon discussed in the former book from a different perspective and in a different local expression, that of colonial Madras in the Ellis years, especially the years from the founding of the College of Fort St George in 1812 to the untimely death of Ellis in 1819. This was a period when the most interesting interactions about languages and nations were taking place between Indian and English scholars in Madras, resulting eventually in a distinctive Madras School of Orientalism.

Mandatory reading for all students and scholars of ancient and modern Indian history, this book is a most compelling sequel to the classic Aryans and British India.

Thomas R. Trautmann is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the author of Dravidian Kinship (1981) and Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (1987). He is the editor of Time, Histories and Ethnologies (co-edited 1995), Transformations of Kinship (1998), and The Aryan Debate (2004).