D.N. Majumdar

D.N. Majumdar
File:Majumdar, D.N..jpg
Born	1903
Died	1961
Society Membership membership ordinary fellow elected_AI 1940.01.23

Notes

House Notes

A63 has Majumbder, Datta-N. does this mean notes below do not refer?

Notes From Elsewhere

Dhirendra Nath Majuradar was born in Patna in 1903. He received his early education in West Bengal and became graduated from the Arts Faculty of the University of Calcutta in 1922. He also did his M.A. (1924) in Anthropology from the same University where he was placed in first division and secured the first rank among the successful candidates.
He conducted first fieldwork in Bihar among the Hos of Kolhan. At this time he got the company of the veteran Indian Ethnographer, Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Roy. University of Calcutta awarded him with Premchand Roychand Scholarship in 1926 for the merit of his original research.
D.N. Majumdar was one of the earliest students of anthropology who received their Master’s degree from the University of Calcutta, after the establishment of this discipline in 1920. In 1928, Prof. Radhakamal Mukherjee selected him as a lecturer in Primitive Economics in the Department of Economics and Sociology at the University of Lucknow.
Among the Indian scholars of that time Sri Majumdar had an in-depth knowledge and abiding interest in Anthropology. His contribution to anthropology was many and various. University of Calcutta again awarded him Mouat Gold Medal in 1929. In 1933 he went to Cambridge There he studied social anthropology with Prof T.C. Hodson and physical anthropology with Prof G.M. Morant. In 1935, he received Ph.D. degree from Cambridge. The subject of his dissertation was cultural change among the Hos.
In 1936, he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1939, he presided over the Anthropology and Archaeology Section of the 26th Session of the Indian Science Congress held at Lahore. He was a good conversationalist and optimist with firm faith in his vocation.
In 1945, Prof Majumdar founded the Ethnographic and Folk-culture Society of U.P. The principal aim of this Society was to collect ethnographic data on folk cultures of Uttar Pradesh. Two years later, the Society brought out the reputed journal. ‘The Eastern Anthropologist’ and D.N. Majumdar became the Editor. From the beginning of his anthropological career, he combined anthropometric surveys with ethnographic investigations. He tried to coordinate between the cultural anthropology and physical anthropology. Although he was not engaged in any investigations in prehistoric site, he kept himself concerned with the major developments in archaeological anthropology and occasionally he lectured on this subject.
In the field of anthropology, Majumdar’s vast contribution came mainly in the form of extensive anthropometric and serological surveys, which was carried out among the tribes and castes of Bihar, M.P., U.P., Gujarat and Bengal. He emphasized statistical techniques in the analysis of anthropometric and serological data. This particular method was designated as biometrics method in anthropology.

Publications

External Publications

An Introduction to Social Anthropology, by DN Majumdar and TN Madan

Related Material Details

RAI Material

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