Edgar Thurston

Edgar Thurston CIE (1855-1935) was a British museologist and ethnographer working in colonial Southern India. In 1885 he was appointed to the Madras Government Museum, where he held the role of Superintendent. Among other published works, he wrote the seven volumes of Castes and Tribes of Southern India, which was a part of the Ethnographic Survey of India project to which he was appointed in 1901 following the success of Herbert Hope Risley's Ethnographic Survey of Bengal.[1]

He was assisted in the writing of Castes and Tribes by a colleague from the museum, K. Rangachari, who had also assisted him in a 1906 ethnographic study, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India. Rangachari had supplied most of the forty photographs used in this earlier study.[1] The September 1910 edition of Nature described the work as

a monumental record of the varied phases of south Indian tribal life, the traditions, manners and customs of people. Though in some respects it may be corrected or supplemented by future research it will long retain its value as an example of out-door investigation, and will remain a veritable mine of information, which will be of value

Thurston was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind, first class, on 26 June 1902.[2]

Some marine organisms were named after him: Manaria thurstoni (E.A. Smith, 1906), Sepia thurstoni (W. Adam & W. J. Rees, 1966), Mobula thurstoni (Lloyd, 1908), Ecteinascidia thurstoni (Herdman, 1890).[3]

Works

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Vundru, Raja Sekhar (24 January 2010). "Mosaic of communities". The Hindu. http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/01/24/stories/2010012450180400.htm. Retrieved 2011-11-09. 
  2. ^ The India List and Office List. India Office. 1905. p. 172. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3VQTAAAAYAAJ. Retrieved 2011-11-11. 
  3. ^ Petymol.tu.html at www.tmbl.gu.se

External links