Ravi the blogger

  ·          The first suggestions to start a museum for Madras were made by the Secretary of the Madras Literary Society in 1843. Since 1828, the Madras Literary Society had been accumulating a collection of geological specimens. In a letter to the Chief Secretary of the Madras government on November 10, 1843, the Secretary of the Madras Literary Society suggested that the government start a museum for economic geology. ·         In a letter to the Chief Secretary of Madras dated December 5, 1843, Major-General W. W. Cullen, the British Resident at Travancore,   also suggested the opening of a central museum at Madras city with branches in all the districts, if possible, at the district collectorates. ·         The next year viz 1844, Henry Chamiers, a member of the Governor’s executive council discussed the two letters and recommended the setting up of a museum...

Edgar Thurston (1855-1935), who was Superintendent of the Madras Government Museum from 1885 to 1908, was also perhaps the most flamboyant of the lot. He was a champion of the science of anthropometry and eyewitness accounts from the period testify that he would invite visitors to the anthropometric section of the museum to have their skulls measured. Today, Thurston is remembered for the monumental seven volume Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909) that he compiled with the assistance of K. Rangachari. Though science has invalidated many of the anthropomoteric techniques he used, the work is still frequently consulted by scholars for the wealth of information it contains. He also authored a work on the omens and superstitions of southern India. As part of his research work into his Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Thurston took skull measurements of a few individuals from every caste/tribe. Based on these sample measurements, he would calculate cephalic indices (which i...