A TRIBAL- FRIENDLY LEGACY

Texi Osarna Manzar
Sarat Chandra Roy is known to some as the “Father of Indian Ethnology” and to some as the “architect of Indian anthropology.” Today Roy’s residence is a library cum museum with thousands of books on anthropology and a prehistoric collection dating back to the Stone Age, Copper Age and Iron Age.
S.C. Roy was born in East Bengal (now Bangladesh), studied in Calcutta and finally settled in Ranchi where he spent most of his life in the green valley of Chotanagpur where he took up the cause of the tribals of Chotanagpur and became their spokesman. Today his residence is still continuing a tribal-friendly legacy.
Roy’s house on Church Road in Ranchi has a marble tablet at the entrance on which is inscribed, Man in India Office, after the journal which was started by him in 1921 and completes 75 years of its publication this year. Some students and researchers still visit the house from where the specialized socio anthropological quarterly journal is published. Roy’s daughter, Mira Roy, being the trustee of the journal, manages the office and looks after her father’s collection of books and some extremely valuable anthropological material that Roy had collected from different regions.
As R.M. Sarkar, the current editor of Man in India, puts it, “The emergence of the pioneer journal of anthropology in India - perfectly named Man in India - was the outcome of inartificial zeal and indomitable firmness of the late Sarat Chandra Roy in whom the two distinct currents of knowledge and sentiments like anthropology and philanthropy came together giving rise to an integrated dimension of understanding, which worked as a catalytic agent in shaping and forming a unique medium of exchange of ideas centering around man  his biology and society.”
Roy basically settled in Ranchi to practice law, but was soon drawn towards the tribes in the region. Being situated in a tribal dominated region, Ranchi Court was very often visited by tribal clients. But most of the time these clients did not receive requisite treatment from the Court of Law. According to an issue of Man in India, “Through the profession of law, Roy came in close contact with many tribal people who regularly paid visits to his residence which ultimately became the meeting platform not only of the lawyer and his clientele but also of the investigators and his informants.”
Gradually, Roy started going into the midst of the tribal people living in the villages spread over the hills and dales of Chotanagpur. And, finally, everything that Roy saw and conceived was delivered in the form of seven books: The Mundas and Their Country; The Kharias in 2 volumes; The Hill Bhuiyas; Qraon Religion and Customs; The Qraons of Chotanagpur; The Birhors and Caste, Race and Religion in India.
Before Roy started writing, Indian anthropology was in its formative stages and all information about tribes was contributed by Europeans like H.H. Risley, E.T. Dalton, L.S. S. O’Malley, Mills, Bodding, Russel and Thurston. Roy was the first Indian to write exhaustive monographs on the Chotanagpur tribes. And the first publication, from Roy’s pen came as early as 1912, by the name of The Mundas and their Country. Roy has gone in detail, giving information about the Mundas in the ethnographical section of this book. According to Ms. Roy a reprint of the book will be released very shortly. Judging by the impact of the book, the government sponsored another book by Roy on the Oraon tribes. In addition, Roy contributed many articles to important journals in India as well as abroad, mostly for ethnological interest. His acknowledgment around the world made him a member of many international organizations on anthropology and ethnology. He was also the secretary of a society called Anthropology and Folk-lore in the year 1920. He was made the first Indian curator of the Patna Museum in 1917. Says Ms. Roy, “Sarat contributed many original collections from South Bihar, including huge amounts of gold and silver coins,” which, as she believes, were sold.
Besides being the office of Man in India, today Roy’s house is a treasure. Says Meera Roy, “Anyone who is interested in the tribals of Chotanagpur comes here. “You name any country — USA, UK, Germany, or South East Asia countries — students and researchers from every corner of the world come here.”
According to Ms. Roy, some people even come just to see Roy’s house and his collections of tribal implements called mundarica. Prominent among the mundaricas is a unique Time Arrow. This arrow’s functional mechanism is like that of a time bomb, and “was used by the tribals to kill deer or lions when the latter used to come to ponds to drink water at a fixed time as a daily routine.” Beside this, the walls of Roy’s house are hung with hundreds of mundaricas, such as weapons like axe and axe heads, arrow heads, bird- trap, rat-trap, agricultural implements, musical instruments, blacksmith implements, plates and cups made of tree leaves, a water bottle and vessels made of gourd and a lot of ornaments like bracelets, anklets all made of wood.
The collection does not end here. If you go deep into a corner there are many ancient excavated findings like Buddhist stupas; Natraja; stone sharpeners; Tibetan mica stone with a Brahmilipi script on it; statues of Shiva, Narayana, Hanumana and Sarswati; and numerous panchjanya shankh (conches).