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Anthropology

Anthropology as is being practiced in the Anthropological Survey of India is unique with a truly holistic flavor. From very early on, it endeavoured to bring in multi-disciplinary teams recruiting Anthropologists of both Cultural/Social and Biological varieties along with Linguists, Human Ecologists, Biochemists, Psychologists and Statisticians who collaborate with each other and with the National and State level institutions, while interacting with the renowned scholars of other countries to study man in all his entirety, not just for the sake of study but to create a human concern for one another and to help tackle problems of contemporary relevance. Anthological Survey of India swung in to an all round modernization drive by employing state-of-the art technologies and infrastructural development in a big way to go ahead with its mandate.Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behaviour, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.Archaeological anthropology, often termed as “anthropology of the past,” studies human activity through investigation of physical evidence. It is considered a branch of anthropology in North America and Asia, while in Europe, archaeology is viewed as a discipline in its own right or grouped under other related disciplines, such as history and paleontology. Origin and development of the term Anthropology, that is to say the science that treats of man, is divided ordinarily and with reason into Anatomy, which considers the body and the parts, and Psychology, which speaks of the soul.[n 3]Sporadic use of the term for some of the subject matter occurred subsequently, such as the use by Étienne Serres in 1839 to describe the natural history, or paleontology, of man, based on comparative anatomy, and the creation of a chair in anthropology and ethnography in 1850 at the French National Museum of Natural History by Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau. Various short-lived organizations of anthropologists had already been formed. The Société Ethnologique de Paris, the first to use the term ethnology, was formed in 1839 and focused on methodically studying human races. After the death of its founder, William Frédéric Edwards, in 1842, it gradually declined in activity until it eventually dissolved in 1862.[12]Meanwhile, the Ethnological Society of New York, currently the American Ethnological Society, was founded on its model in 1842, as well as the Ethnological Society of London in 1843, a break-away group of the Aborigines’ Protection Society.[13] These anthropologists of the times were liberal, anti-slavery, and pro-human-rights activists. They maintained international connections.[citation needed]Anthropology and many other current fields are the intellectual results of the comparative methods developed in the earlier 19th century. Theorists in such diverse fields as anatomy, linguistics, and ethnology, making feature-by-feature comparisons of their subject matters, were beginning to suspect that similarities between animals, languages, and folkways were the result of processes or laws unknown to them then.[14] For them, the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was the epiphany of everything they had begun to suspect. Darwin himself arrived at his conclusions through comparison of species he had seen in agronomy and in the wild.Darwin and Wallace unveiled evolution in the late 1850s. There was an immediate rush to bring it into the social sciences. Paul Broca in Paris was in the process of breaking away from the Société de biologie to form the first of the explicitly anthropological societies, the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, meeting for the first time in Paris in 1859.[15][n 4] When he read Darwin, he became an immediate convert to Transformisme, as the French called evolutionism.[16] His definition now became “the study of the human group, considered as a whole, in its details, and in relation to the rest of nature”.[17]Broca, being what today would be called a neurosurgeon, had taken an interest in the pathology of speech. He wanted to localize the difference between man and the other animals, which appeared to reside in speech. He discovered the speech center of the human brain, today called Broca’s area after him. His interest was mainly in Biological anthropology, but a German philosopher specializing in psychology, Theodor Waitz, took up the theme of general and social anthropology in his six-volume work, entitled Die Anthropologie der Naturvölker, 1859–1864. The title was soon translated as “The Anthropology of Primitive Peoples”. The last two volumes were published posthumously.Waitz defined anthropology as “the science of the nature of man”. Following Broca’s lead, Waitz points out that anthropology is a new field, which would gather material from other fields, but would differ from them in the use of comparative anatomy, physiology, and psychology to differentiate man from “the animals nearest to him”. He stresses that the data of comparison must be empirical, gathered by experimentation.[18] The history of civilization, as well as ethnology, are to be brought into the comparison. It is to be presumed fundamentally that the species, man, is a unity, and that “the same laws of thought are applicable to all men”.[19]Waitz was influential among British ethnologists. In 1863, the explorer Richard Francis Burton and the speech therapist James Hunt broke away from the Ethnological Society of London to form the Anthropological Society of London, which henceforward would follow the path of the new anthropology rather than just ethnology. It was the 2nd society dedicated to general anthropology in existence. Representatives from the French Société were present, though not Broca. In his keynote address, printed in the first volume of its new publication, The Anthropological Review, Hunt stressed the work of Waitz, adopting his definitions as a standard.[20][n 5] Among the first associates were the young Edward Burnett Tylor, inventor of cultural anthropology, and his brother Alfred Tylor, a geologist. Previously Edward had referred to himself as an ethnologist; subsequently, an anthropologist.Similar organizations in other

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Project Mausam

Mausam: Maritime Routes and Cultural Landscapes Project ‘Mausam’ is a Ministry of Culture project to be implemented by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi as the nodal coordinating agency with support of Archeological Survey of India and National Museum as associate bodies. Project Launch The unique idea of this project to showcase a Transnational Mixed Route (including Natural and Cultural Heritage) on the World Heritage List has been well appreciated during the Project Launch by India at the 38th World Heritage Session at Doha, Qatar on 20th June, 2014. The Director General UNESCO appreciated India’s initiative in launching this unique project and ambassadors of several countries including China, UAE, Qatar, Iran, Myanmar, and Vietnam expressed great interest in this multifaceted cultural project. About the Project Focusing on monsoon patterns, cultural routes and maritime landscapes, Project ‘Mausam’ is examining key processes and phenomena that link different parts of the Indian Ocean littoral as well as those that connect the coastal centres to their hinterlands. Broadly, Project ‘Mausam’ aims to understand how the knowledge and manipulation of the monsoon winds has shaped interactions across the Indian Ocean and led to the spread of shared knowledge systems, traditions, technologies and ideas along maritime routes. These exchanges were facilitated by different coastal centres and their surrounding environs in their respective chronological and spatial contexts, and simultaneously had an effect on them. The endeavour of Project ‘Mausam’is to position itself at two levels: The Project scope falls under several themes to be explored through various UNESCO Culture Conventions to which the Government of India is a signatory with the Ministry of Culture and ASI as nodal agency. Initiatives till date Preliminary works on this new project has already been initiated. A monthly lecture series has been organized at India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi in collaboration with IGNCA, National Monuments Authority (NMA), New Delhi and IIC. The first international conference, scheduled in February 2015, is being organized with national and international research partners and collaborators. The Research Unit at IGNCA is in the process of collating data from all identified organisations and institutions and a series of national workshops are planned before the international conference in Feb. 2015.

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Libraries & Manuscripts

Libraries Library service comes under the aegis of State Governments and the States vary in their size, population, literacy rate, production of literature in regional languages and library infrastructure. THE BEGINNING HH Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III, Maharaja of Baroda, pioneered the development of Public Library System in India as early as 1910.The Maharaja insisted that “libraries should not limit their benefits to the few English knowing readers, but should see to it that their good work permeates through to the many”, and that “the vernacular libraries should be encouraged” so that every citizen of the State “may enrol himself as a pupil in the peoples’ university-the library. He established a Library Department with Mr. W. A.Borden as the first full time Director of State Libraries. A Central Library at Baroda with a nucleus collection of 88,764 volumes including the Maharaja’s private collection of 20,000 books was established with a full time Curator. The Maharaja also established an Oriental Institute and Library with 6,846 printed books and 1,420 manuscripts in Sanskrit, Gujarati and other languages. He was the first to initiate the publication of Gaekwad’s Oriental Series in 1915. It is mind-boggling to learn that even a century ago the Maharaja arranged to purchase a Photostat camera and a camera projector by the State. The projector was utilized to view the silent films etc. He started Library Associations from Taluk level, organized ‘Mitra Mandal’ in the town & villages and organized regular library conferences. Mobile library service was organized to cater to the book need at remote villages. THE DEVELOPMENT and PUBLIC LIBRARY LEGISLATION In India, there are 54,856 public libraries starting from English Colony Library at Chennai in 1661. 1972 was declared as International Book Year with the slogan BOOKS FOR ALL.Even before Independence, Kolhapur Princely State, in the Western India passed Public Libraries Act in 1945. 19 States of the Indian Union have successfully passed the library legislation. In the coming few years, there is greater possibility for a library law being enacted in the remaining States. RELATIONSHIP OF MINISTRY OF CULTURE THE DEPOSIT OF BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS & ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS IN LIBRARIES BILL 2013 A new Act “The Deposit of Books, Newspapers and Electronic Publications in Libraries Bill 2013” repealing the old Act is under consideration. THE NATIONAL MISSION ON LIBRARIES (NML) The National Mission on Libraries (NML) was launched by the Hon.’ble President of India on 3rd February,2014. NML has a budget allocation of Rs. 400 Crores with the objective of establishing a National Virtual Library of India, establishment of Model Libraries, quantitative/ qualitative survey of Libraries and capacity building. Under the scheme, 6 libraries under the Culture Ministry, 35 Central Libraries in states and 35 District Libraries are to be developed as model libraries , with emphasis on developing these libraries in economically backward districts. Further, 629 district libraries across the states would be provided network connectivity. COLLABORATION WITH INTERNATIONAL & NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. On the International scenario, Ministry of Culture has an agreement with more than 100 Libraries in the world for exchange of resources and personnel. The International Book Fair is held every year at New Delhi in the month of February World Book Day (23rd April) is celebrated as Vishva Pustak Diwas in India. The Jaipur Literature Festival, the biggest literary festival in Asia which attracts thousands of writers and visitors from all over the world is held in Jaipur every year in the month of January. One of the unique attractions of this festival is the live performances given by famous musicians. Jaipur Literature Festival has been taking place in Jaipur since the year 2006. The National Library Week is celebrated from 14th to 21st November every year in India THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE EXERCISES ADMINISTRATIVE SUPERVISION OVER SIX PUBLIC LIBRARIES. NATIONAL LIBRARY (Ministry of Culture Government of India Kolkata) The origins of the National Library, Kolkata begins with the establishment of Calcutta Public Library on 21st March 1836. The Imperial Secretariat Library came into existence in 1981 by integrating all Secretariat Libraries. In the year 1902, the Calcutta Public Library and the Imperial Secretariat Library were amalgamated and gave way to establishment of The Imperial Library. After Independence of India, the National Library came into being in place of Imperial Library by the “Imperial Library (Change of Name) Act” in 1948. It was accorded a special status of an Institution of National Importance in the Article 62 in the 7th Schedule of the Constitution of India and was opened to Public on 1st February 1953. The origins of the National Library, Kolkata begins with the establishment of Calcutta Public Library on 21st March 1836. The Imperial Secretariat Library came into existence in 1981 by integrating all Secretariat Libraries. In the year 1902, the Calcutta Public Library and the Imperial Secretariat Library were amalgamated and gave way to establishment of The Imperial Library. After Independence of India, the National Library came into being in place of Imperial Library by the “Imperial Library (Change of Name) Act” in 1948. It was accorded a special status of an Institution of National Importance in the Article 62 in the 7th Schedule of the Constitution of India and was opened to Public on 1st February 1953. The National Library serves as a permanent repository of all books, newspapers and periodicals published in India. The Library receives all publications published in the territory of India under the provisions of “the Delivery of Books and Newspapers (Public Libraries) Act, 1954”. The Act was amended in 1956 to include periodical publications, newspapers and maps within its purview It provides all possible readers’ services for 362 days of the year. Besides reading, reference and bibliographic services, books are lent out against security deposit. It also provides microfilm/microfiche reading facilities. While inter library loan is extended, the Library acts as a Centre for International loan. Consultancy services are also provided to libraries and librarians. The Library offers internship programme to the Young Post Graduates from Library and Information Science every year. The

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Visual Arts

The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines, such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts, also involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts, such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and decorative art.Current usage of the term “visual arts” includes fine art as well as applied or decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term ‘artist’ had for some centuries often been restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the decorative arts, crafts, or applied visual arts media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to privilege painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture, above other arts has been a feature of Western art as well as East Asian art. In both regions, painting has been seen as relying to the highest degree on the imagination of the artist and being the furthest removed from manual labour – in Chinese painting, the most highly valued styles were those of “scholar-painting”, at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes. Education and training Training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. In Europe, the Renaissance movement to increase the prestige of the artist led to the academy system for training artists, and today most of the people who are pursuing a career in the arts train in art schools at tertiary levels. Visual arts have now become an elective subject in most education systems.In East Asia, arts education for nonprofessional artists typically focused on brushwork; calligraphy was numbered among the Six Arts of gentlemen in the Chinese Zhou Dynasty, and calligraphy and Chinese painting were numbered among the four arts of scholar-officials in imperial China.Leading country in the development of the arts in Latin America, in 1875 created the National Society of the Stimulus of the Arts, founded by painters Eduardo Schiaffino, Eduardo Sívori, and other artists. Their guild was rechartered as the National Academy of Fine Arts in 1905 and, in 1923, on the initiative of painter and academic Ernesto de la Cárcova, as a department in the University of Buenos Aires, the Superior Art School of the Nation. Currently, the leading educational organization for the arts in the country is the UNA Universidad Nacional de las Artes. Drawing Drawing is a means of making an image, illustration or graphic using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques available online and offline. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface using dry media such as graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools, including pens, stylus, that simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, shading, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels at drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman.Drawing and painting go back tens of thousands of years. Art of the Upper Paleolithic includes figurative art beginning between about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Non-figurative cave paintings consisting of hand stencils and simple geometric shapes are even older. Paleolithic cave representations of animals are found in areas such as Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain in Europe, Maros, Sulawesi in Asia, and Gabarnmung, Australia.In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture. Drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed into the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC.With paper becoming common in Europe by the 15th century, drawing was adopted by masters such as Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, who sometimes treated drawing as an art in its own right rather than a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture. Painting Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition, or other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting is also used to express spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to The Sistine Chapel, to the human body itself.

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Literature & Folklore

The idea, the word, ‘folk’ has wide range of understanding and connotations – ranging from ‘natural’ to ‘native’ to ‘traditional’ to ‘rural’ and in some cases ‘from the heart.’ The ‘outpourings from the heart’ of native or traditional people later takes the form of folklore. All folklores are oral traditions, the lore, traditional knowledge and beliefs of cultures often having no written language and they are transmitted, generally, by word of mouth. Like the written literature they contain both prose and verse narratives in addition to myths, dramas, rituals etc. All the cultures have their own folklores. In contrast and traditionally, literature is understood to mean any written work. All folklores do more than merely conveying heart-pourings of natives about the nature around them. They are often, nay, always the carriers of culture, of social mores, customs and forms of behaviour – that is a society, nay, life in a nutshell. Folklores contain the lofty thoughts of yore and highest metaphysical truths, normally incomprehensible to laymen, in a subtle, story forms. Literature, in written form, helps in preserving the folklores and oral traditions. But for the literature in this form, the world would have lost almost all the folk and oral traditions. Written books, as recordings of folklores help in passing on the lofty thoughts and ideas to posterity with no or very little changes in contrast to oral traditions where they often get lost in transition. Literature also can highlight the relevance of the stories of the past to the generation of the present, something which the oral traditions cannot strongly do. Indian Literature, compared to any other literature in the world, played a dominant role in the preservation and propagation of oral traditions and folklores. Very ancients of this land, India, were past masters of all art forms that is folk. Sama Veda, to name one, is probably oldest form of folk music that has survived till date. Even if one takesSama Veda as a rusty folk music, then it is the finest and ancient folk music that the world has ever witnessed. From the Epics of India, Ramayana and Mahabharata to Jataka tales of Buddhism to Pancha Tantras and Hitopadesha to Katha Saritsagarain the medieval period to mystic songs of Bauls of Bengal to numerous works in almost all the main languages of India, the scholars, saints and writers have kept the oral traditions and folklores alive by writing down many a tale. What is more unique to Indian attempts over centuries in preserving the folklores is the role played by women in it. The roles played by Gargi and Maitreyi of the distant past to Andal of Tamil Nadu at the beginning of the previous millennium to Lalleswari of Kashmir to Molla of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh to Akka Mahadevi of Karnataka to Sahajo Bai, is nothing short of stellar. India remains one of the world’s richest sources of folktales. Not merely folktales but all forms of oral traditions – proverbs, aphorisms, anecdotes, rumours, songs, impromptu folk street plays – mirror the culture and values of the land in which they take place. They have also helped in binding vastly differing mores and customs of even a single given place. India is one place where the speech of even the most illiterate farmer is filled with lofty thoughts and metaphors. By preserving and adopting many a tale and numerous songs and plays peppered with the proverbs and aphorisms of the region, Indian Literature has played a huge role in binding together vast cultures in an unseen way. The role of Indian Literature in maintaining and fostering cultural unity and identity in the vast land such as India cannot be diminished. Indian folk literature holds out a strong and loud message for other parts of the world where these art forms have disappeared thick and fast in consonance with rapid industrialization and globalization. Folk literature and folk art forms are not merely carriers of culture or philosophical poems, but rather the expressions of strong self-reflections and deep insights accrued therein. Simple life, self-reflection and treading the path of the righteous contained in traditions. Again, folk traditions are not merely platforms for holding high moral ground having no relevance to the present day reality. Several folk plays like Chaakiyar Koothu and Veethi Naatakam are used even today as satire plays and commentaries on the current social and political reality. Same holds true for many folk songs from the vast pages of Indian literature. It is also true that when recorded and propagated in a printed form these folk literatures also gain mass reach which is otherwise confined to a smaller space and reach out only to smaller groups and communities. Through medieval Indian literature to 20th century we see the reality of Indian literature holding up for oral traditions contrary to popular perception when it is very true of European cultures and others where they have almost completely lost folk literature. Most recent example of this phenomenon we can see in the effort of famous Rajasthani folklorist, Sri Vijay Dan Detha. In the modern democratic India, folk literature is pursued both within the academia and outside it unlike many other cultures. Efforts of Sahitya Akademi and other similar organizations form part of this collective attempt to preserve and disseminate Indian folk literature. Sahitya Akademi, India’s premier institution of letters is devoted to the preservation and promotion of Indian Literature in all the 24 languages recognized by it. The core of the Akademi’s work is translation among various Indian languages including minor languages and dialects with the objective of promoting cultural unity in India and enhancing regional co-operation in a vastly diverse country with so many languages, traditions and cultures. The Sahitya Akademi also promotes Indian folk literature in all possible ways – by giving awards to folk literature; by holding conventions and giving awards in minor languages, languages without scripts and tribal dialects; publishing folk stories in its journals in the form of second tradition; publishing folk

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