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Accessed: 9/8/20
Cover page of a 1931 edition of The Indian Antiquary
The Indian Antiquary, A journal of oriental research in archaeology, history, literature, language, philosophy, religion, folklore, &c, &c, (subtitle varies) was a journal of original research relating to India, published between 1872 and 1933. It was founded by the archaeologist James Burgess to enable the sharing of knowledge between scholars based in Europe and in India and was notable for the high quality of its epigraphic illustrations which enabled scholars to make accurate translations of texts that in many cases remain the definitive versions to this day. It was also pioneering in its recording of Indian folklore. It was succeeded by The New Indian Antiquary (1938-47) and the Indian Antiquary (1964-71).
James Burgess CIE FRSE FRGS MRAS LLD (14 August 1832[1] – 3 October 1916), was the founder of The Indian Antiquary in 1872[2] and an important archaeologist of India in the 19th century.
Burgess was born on 14 August 1832 in Kirkmahoe, Dumfriesshire. He was educated at Dumfries and then the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh.
He did educational work in Calcutta, 1856 and Bombay, 1861, and was Secretary of the Bombay Geographical Society 1868-73. He was Head of the Archaeological Survey, Western India, 1873, and of South India, 1881. From 1886-89 he was Director General, Archaeological Survey of India.
In 1881 the University of Edinburgh awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters (LLD).[4]
He retired to Edinburgh around 1892.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1894. He won its Keith Medal for 1897-99, and served as their Vice President 1908 to 1914.
He died on 3 October 1916, at 22 Seton Place in Edinburgh.
-- James Burgess (archaeologist), by Wikipedia
History
The Indian Antiquary was founded in 1872 by the archaeologist James Burgess CIE as a journal of original research relating to India. It was designed to enable the sharing of knowledge between scholars based in Europe and in India.[1][2]
The journal was a private venture,[3] although no contributor or editor was ever paid for their work and the editors often had to support the publication out of their own pockets.[3] Burgess was the first editor and he continued in that role until the end of 1884 when failing eyesight forced him to hand over to John Faithfull Fleet and Richard Carnac Temple.[3]
The late nineteenth century was marked by a great increase in the number of local historical societies in India and a similar increase in the number of Indians who could speak and write English, to the extent that by the 1920s the entire journal could have been filled with work by Indian contributors.[4] Volumes for 1925 to 1932 were published under the authority of the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1933, not).
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a long-established anthropological organisation, with a global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology, such as biological anthropology, evolutionary anthropology, social anthropology, cultural anthropology, visual anthropology and medical anthropology, as well as sub-specialisms within these, and interests shared with neighbouring disciplines such as human genetics, archaeology and linguistics. It seeks to combine a tradition of scholarship with services to anthropologists, including students.
The RAI promotes the public understanding of anthropology, as well as the contribution anthropology can make to public affairs and social issues. It includes within its constituency not only academic anthropologists, but also those with a general interest in the subject, and those trained in anthropology who work in other fields.
The Institute's fellows are lineal successors to the founding fellows of the Ethnological Society of London, who in February 1843 formed a breakaway group of the Aborigines' Protection Society, which had been founded in 1837. The new society was to be 'a centre and depository for the collection and systematisation of all observations made on human races'.
Between 1863 and 1870 there were two organisations, the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological Society. The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1871) was the result of a merger between these two rival bodies. Permission to add the word 'Royal' was granted in 1907.
-- Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, by Wikipedia
The Ethnological Society of London (ESL) was a learned society founded in 1843 as an offshoot of the Aborigines' Protection Society (APS). The meaning of ethnology as a discipline was not then fixed: approaches and attitudes to it changed over its lifetime, with the rise of a more scientific approach to human diversity. Over three decades the ESL had a chequered existence, with periods of low activity and a major schism contributing to a patchy continuity of its meetings and publications. It provided a forum for discussion of what would now be classed as pioneering scientific anthropology from the changing perspectives of the period, though also with wider geographical, archaeological and linguistic interests.
In 1871 the ESL became part of what now is the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, merging back with the breakaway rival group the Anthropological Society of London...
The approach to ethnology current at the time of the Society's founding relied on climate and social factors to explain human diversity; the debate was still framed by Noah's Flood, and the corresponding monogenism of human origins. Prichard was a major figure in looking at human variability from a diachronic angle, and argued for ethnology as such a study, aimed at resolving the question of human origins...
The Aborigines' Protection Society (APS) was set up as a result of parliamentary committee activity, and was largely the initiative of Thomas Fowell Buxton. It produced reports, but in the wake of the Niger expedition of 1841 some of its supporters believed a case made on science was being sidelined in the activities of the APS.The Niger expedition of 1841 was mounted by British missionary and activist groups in 1841-1842, using three British iron steam vessels to travel to Lokoja, at the confluence of the Niger River and Benue River, in what is now Nigeria. The British government backed the effort to make treaties with the native peoples, introduce Christianity and promote increased trade. The crews of the boats suffered a high mortality from disease.
The expedition was put into motion by an Exeter Hall meeting of 1 June 1840. It was chaired by Prince Albert. The organisers were the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for the Civilization of Africa, set up in 1839 by Thomas Fowell Buxton. Buxton was promoting a grandiose "New Africa" policy, based on a series of treaties to be made in West Africa, the introduction of Christianity, and increased commerce, as set out in his book the previous year.
-- Niger expedition of 1841, by Wikipedia
The APS was founded by Quakers in order to promote a specific social and political agenda. The Ethnological Society, though primarily a scientific organization, retained some of its predecessor's liberal outlook and activist bent...
John Briggs became a Fellow of the ESL in 1845, and Brian Houghton Hodgson, also representing the ethnology of India, was at some point made an Honorary Fellow. William Augustus Miles was a member and published a paper on the aboriginal Australian culture.
After Prichard's death in 1848, the intellectual leader in the Society became Robert Gordon Latham. Links to the Aborigines' Protection Society were retained through the common membership of Hodgkin and Henry Christy, though the break was not completely amicable. The Ethnological Society in its early years lacked good contacts with officialdom, certainly compared to the RGS and its good working relationship with the Colonial Office. Governor George Grey was helpful to the Society, but he was an exception: it took until the end of the decade for the Society to begin to appreciate its marginal position with respect to the flow of information from the British colonies. Grey was an active member of the ESL while abroad as a colonial administrator, and his network included William Ellis, another member...
Thomas Richard Heywood Thomson delivered a paper in 1854 to the Society on interfertility, casting doubt on comments of Paweł Edmund Strzelecki about female infertility among Aboriginal Australians after they had given birth to a child with a white father. The communication was well received, but as a contribution to the ongoing debate on race, was far from settling the significant underlying issue.
James Hunt joined the ESL in 1854, and became a divisive figure because of his attacks on humanitarian attitudes of missionaries and abolitionists. He served as secretary from 1859 to 1862. He found an ally in John Crawfurd, who had retired from service as colonial diplomat and administrator for the East India Company. Crawfurd came to ethnology through its section in the BAAS. His published views on race were discordant with the Quaker and APS tradition in the ESL. Hunt and Crawfurd in 1858 tried to dislodge the President Sir James Clark at an ESL meeting, unsuccessfully, while Hodgkin was out of the country.
The 1860s saw a revived interest in ethnology, triggered by recent work, such as that involving flint implements and the antiquity of man. The Ethnological Society became a more of meeting-place for archaeologists, as its interests kept pace with new work; and during this decade the Society became a very different institution. The society's original members had mainly been military officers, civil servants, and members of the clergy, but by the early 1860s younger scientists had supplanted them. The background was of continuing encounters worldwide with many peoples; John Thomson the photographer who was recording them became a member in 1866. Thomas Henry Huxley, Augustus Lane Fox, Edward Tylor, Henry Christy, John Lubbock, and Augustus Wollaston Franks all figured prominently in the society's affairs after 1860.
In the years after the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, the "Ethnologicals" generally supported Charles Darwin against his critics, and rejected the more extreme forms of scientific racism. The movement towards Darwinism was not one way, however, as evidenced by the Honorary Fellowship given to Robert Knox in 1860.Robert Knox FRSE FRCSE MWS (4 September 1791 – 20 December 1862) was a Scottish anatomist, zoologist, ethologist and physician. He was a lecturer on anatomy in Edinburgh, where he introduced the theory of transcendental anatomy.
He is, however, now mainly remembered for his involvement in the Burke and Hare murders. An incautious approach to obtaining cadavers for dissection after the passage of the Anatomy Act and disagreements with professional colleagues ruined his career. A move to London did not improve matters.
His later pessimistic view of humanity contrasted sharply with his youthful attachment to the ideas of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Knox also devoted the latter part of his life to theorising on evolution and ethnology, as well as being one of the pioneers of scientific racism in Britain. His work on the latter further harmed his legacy and overshadowed his contributions to evolutionary theory...
Knox returned to Edinburgh by Christmas 1822. On 1 December 1823 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh...
Before the Anatomy Act of 1832 widened the supply, the main legal supply of corpses for anatomical purposes in the UK were those condemned to death and dissection by the courts. This led to a chronic shortage of legitimate subjects for dissection, and this shortage became more serious as the need to train medical students grew, and the number of executions fell. In his school Knox ran up against the problem from the start, since—after 1815—the Royal Colleges had increased the anatomical work in the medical curriculum. If he taught according to what was known as 'French method' the ratio would have had to approach one corpse per pupil.
As a consequence, body-snatching became so prevalent that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch over the body until burial, and then to keep watch over the grave after burial, to stop it being violated.
In November 1827, William Hare began a new career when an indebted lodger died on him by chance. He was paid £7.10s (seven pounds & ten shillings) for delivering the body to Knox's dissecting rooms at Surgeons' Square. Now Hare and his accomplice, William Burke, set about murdering the city’s poor on a regular basis. After 16 more transactions, each netting £8-10, in what later became known as the West Port Murders, on 2 November 1828 Burke and Hare were caught, and the whole city convulsed with horror, fed by ballads, broadsides, and newspapers, at the reported deeds of the pair. Hare turned King's evidence, and Burke was hanged, dissected and his remains displayed.
Knox was not prosecuted, which outraged many in Edinburgh. His house was attacked by a mob of 'the lowest rabble of the Old Town,' and windows were broken. A committee of the Royal Society of Edinburgh exonerated him on the grounds that he had not dealt personally with Burke and Hare, but there was no forgetting his part in the case, and many remained wary of him.
Almost immediately after the Burke and Hare case, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh began to harry him, and by June 1831 they had procured his resignation as the Curator of the museum he had proposed and founded. In the same year he was obliged to resign his army commission to avoid further service in the Cape. This removed his last source of guaranteed income, but fortunately his classes were more popular than ever, with a record 504 students. His school moved to the grander premises of Old Surgeons' Hall in 1833 but his class declined after Edinburgh University made its own practical anatomy class compulsory in the mid-1830s. Knox continued to purchase cadavers for his dissection class from such shadowy figures as the 'Black Bull Man,' but the 1832 Anatomy Act made bodies more available to all anatomists, he quarrelled with HM Inspector of Anatomy over the supply of bodies, and his competitive edge was lost. In 1837 Knox applied for the chair in pathology at Edinburgh University but his candidature was blocked by eleven existing professors, who preferred to abolish the post rather than appoint him. In 1842 he was unable to make payments to the Edinburgh funeratory system, from which bodies were supplied to private schools, and he relocated to Glasgow where, still short of subjects for dissection, he closed his school in 1844. In 1847 the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh found him guilty of falsifying a student's certificate of attendance (a not uncommon practice in private schools) and refused to accept any further certificates from him, effectively banning him from teaching in Scotland. In the same year he was expelled from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and had his election retrospectively cancelled...
[U]ntil 1856 he worked on medical journalism, gave public lectures, and wrote several books, including his most ambitious work, The Races of Men in which he argued that each race was suited to its environment and "perfect in its own way."...
In his best-selling work, The Races of Men (1850), a "Zoological history" of mankind, Knox exaggerated supposed racial differences in support of his project, asserting that, anatomically and behaviourally, "race, or hereditary descent, is everything". He offered crude characterisations of each racial group: for example the Saxon (in which race he included himself) "invents nothing", "has no musical ear", lacks "genius", and is so "low and boorish" that "he does not know what you mean by fine art". No race was without its redeeming features, however; Knox described Saxons as "[t]houghtful, plodding, industrious beyond all other races, [and] a lover of labour for labour's sake". Such supposed racial characteristics meant that each race was naturally fitted for a particular environment and could not endure outside of it. While Knox maintained that all races were capable of some form civilized life, he maintained that a vast gulf stood between the limited attainments available to the 'negroid' and to most 'mongoloid' races on one hand and the much greater past achievements and future potential of white men on the other. The Black, Knox remarked, 'is no more a white man than an ass is a horse or a zebra'. Ultimately however, all races were "[d]estined ... to run, like all other animals, a certain limited course of existence", it mattering "little how their extinction is brought about". In 1862 Knox took the opportunity of a second edition of The Races of Men to defend the "much maligned races" of the Cape against accusations of cannibalism, and to rebuke the Dutch for treating them like "wild beasts".
From the perspective of a Lowland Scot Protestant, Knox's racist works espoused extreme racial hostility to Celts in general (including the Highland Scots and Welsh people, but particularly the Irish people). He considered the "Caledonian Celt" as touching "the end of his career: they are reduced to about one hundred and fifty thousand" and that the "Welsh Celts are not troublesome, but might easily become so." For Knox, "the Irish Celt is the most to be dreaded" and openy advocated their ethnic cleansing around the time that the Great Famine was happening, stating in The Races of Men: A Fragment (1850): "The source of all evil lies in the race, the Celtic race of Ireland. There is no getting over historical facts. Look at Wales, look at Caledonia; it is ever the same. [...] The race must be forced from the soil; by fair means, if possible; still they must leave. The Orange club of Ireland is a Saxon confederation for the clearing the land of all Papists and Jacobites; this means Celts. If left to themselves, they would clear them out, as Cromwell proposed, by the sword; it would not require six weeks to accomplish the work. But the Encumbered Estates Relief Bill will do it better."
-- Robert Knox, by Wikipedia
The Anthropological Society of London (ASL) was founded in 1863 as an institutional home for those who disagreed with the Ethnological Society's politics (in terms of party loyalties, Stocking makes the political complexion of the ESL 75% Liberal to 25% Conservative, with the proportions reversed in the ASL).[44] On the topic of race, the Ethnological Society retained views descending from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who had a five-race theory but was a monogenist, and from Prichard.Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He was one of the first to explore the study of the human being as an aspect of natural history. His teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to his classification of human races, of which he claimed there were five, Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.
Blumenbach's peers considered him one of the great theorists of his day, and he was a mentor or influence on many of the next generation of German biologists, including Alexander von Humboldt...
Blumenbach's work included his description of sixty human crania (skulls) published originally in fascicules as Decas craniorum (Göttingen, 1790–1828). This was a founding work for other scientists in the field of craniometry. He divided the human species into five races in 1779, later founded on crania research (description of human skulls)...
Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more, from other Africans as from Europeans'.
Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., depended on geography, diet, and mannerism.
Like other monogenists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Blumenbach held to the "degenerative hypothesis" of racial origins. Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian inhabitants of Asia (see Asia hypothesis), and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor diet. Thus, he claimed, Negroid pigmentation arose because of the result of the heat of the tropical sun, while the cold wind caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos, and the Chinese were fair-skinned compared to the other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns protected from environmental factors. He believed that the degeneration could be reversed in a proper environmental control and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race...
He did not consider his "degenerative hypothesis" as racist and sharply criticized Christoph Meiners, an early practitioner of scientific racialism, as well as Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, who concluded from autopsies that Africans were an inferior race. Blumenbach wrote three other essays stating non-white peoples were capable of excelling in arts and sciences in reaction against racialists of his time...
His ideas were adopted by other researchers who used them to encourage scientific racism....Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Historically, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. Dividing humankind into biologically distinct groups is sometimes called racialism or race realism by its proponents. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.
Scientific racism employs anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines, in proposing anthropological typologies supporting the classification of human populations into physically discrete human races, some of which might be asserted to be superior or inferior to others. Scientific racism was common during the period from the 1600s to the end of World War II. Since the second half of the 20th century, scientific racism has been criticized as obsolete and discredited, yet has persistently been used to support or validate racist world-views, based upon belief in the existence and significance of racial categories and a hierarchy of superior and inferior races.
After the end of World War II, scientific racism in theory and action was formally denounced, especially in UNESCO's early antiracist statement "The Race Question" (1950): "The biological fact of race and the myth of 'race' should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth of 'race' has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years, it has taken a heavy toll in human lives, and caused untold suffering." Since that time, developments in human evolutionary genetics and physical anthropology have led to a new consensus among anthropologists that human race is a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one.
The term scientific racism is generally used pejoratively when applied to more modern theories, such as those in The Bell Curve (1994). Critics argue that such works postulate racist conclusions, such as a genetic connection between race and intelligence, that are unsupported by available evidence. Publications such as the Mankind Quarterly, founded explicitly as a "race-conscious" journal, are generally regarded as platforms of scientific racism because they publish fringe interpretations of human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, language, mythology, archaeology, and race.
-- Scientific racism, by Wikipedia
Blumenbach held that all living organisms "from man down to maggots, and from the cedar to common mould or mucor," possess an inherent "effort or tendency which, while life continues, is active and operative; in the first instance to attain the definite form of the species, then to preserve it entire, and, when it is infringed upon, so far as this is possible, to restore it." This power of vitality is "not referable to any qualities merely physical, chemical, or mechanical."
-- Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, by Wikipedia
The post-Darwin concept of human speciation was unacceptable to those forming the Anthropological Society.
-- Ethnological Society of London, by Wikipedia
[5] The first incarnation of the Antiquary ceased publication in 1933 with volume 62, number 783 (Dec. 1933),[5] two years after Richard Temple's death in 1931.[6] Several early volumes of the journal were reprinted by Swati Publications in Delhi, 1984.[7]
The New Indian Antiquary was published between 1938[8] and 1947, and the Indian Antiquary (described as the "third series") between 1964 and 1971.[9] (Volumes 14 to 62 of the original Antiquary were described as the "second series".)[10]
Content
The journal had an archaeological and historical focus, and in the late nineteenth century that naturally meant that epigraphy (the study of inscriptions as writing rather than as literature) would be one of the principal subjects covered in its pages.[11] Indeed, the Antiquary was the premier source of European scholarship on Indian epigraphy until the twentieth century and the official Indian government journal of epigraphy, the Epigraphia Indica, was published as a quarterly supplement to the Antiquary between 1892 and 1920.[3]
The Antiquary was printed at Mazgaon, Bombay, by the Bombay Education Society...
'Good morning, Padre,' the Englishman said cheerily. 'I know you by reputation well enough. Meant to have come over and called before this. I'm Creighton.'
'Of the Ethnological Survey?' said Father Victor. The Englishman nodded. 'Faith, I'm glad to meet ye then; an' I owe you some thanks for bringing back the boy.'
-- Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
and later the British India Press, but illustrations were produced in London by the firm of Griggs who were known for the accuracy of their work.[12] A high standard of reproduction was essential so that scholars could work on the epigraphic material without needing to see the originals.[12] Illustrations in the Antiquary were used by scholars such as Bhandarkar, Bhagvanlal Indraji, Georg Bühler, John Faithfull Fleet, Eggeling and B. Lewis Rice to decipher important inscriptions,[13] and in many cases their translations remain the definitive versions to this day.[11]
Over one thousand plates were included in The Indian Antiquary and the Epigraphia Indica over the first fifty years of publication, but having the illustrations produced abroad was not without its disadvantages. On one occasion during World War I, enemy action meant that expensive plates had to be sent from London three times before they reached Bombay safely.[12]
Another area where the Antiquary led was in recording folklore and folktales. Its publication of Punjab folktales was the first attempt to classify the events on which folk tales were based[4] and the pioneering work on north Indian folklore of William Crooke and Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube was printed in its pages.[14]
References
1. Prospectus in The Indian Antiquary, Part 1, 5 January 1872, p. 1.
2. "The Indian Antiquary" in The Antiquaries Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 1922, p. 148.
3. Temple, Richard Carnac. (1922) Fifty years of The Indian Antiquary. Mazgaon, Bombay: B. Miller, British India Press, pp. 3-4.
4. Temple, p. 7.
5. Jump up to:a b Indian antiquary. Suncat. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
6. Enthoven, R. E. "Temple, Sir Richard Carnac, second baronet (1850–1931), army officer and oriental scholar". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Revised by Jones, M. G. M. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 10 January 2017. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
7. The Indian Antiquary. Open Library. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
8. New Indian Antiquary. South Asia Archive, 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2014.
9. Indian Antiquary, British Library catalogue search, 29 May 2014.
10. Indian Antiquary, British Library catalogue search, 10 January 2017.
11. Salomon, Richard (1998) (10 December 1998). Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-19-535666-3.
12. Temple, p. 6.
13. History, Archaeological Survey of India, 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2014.
14. "Introduction" by Sadhana Naithani in William Crooke; Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube (2002). Folktales from Northern India. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-57607-698-9.
External links
• The Indian Antiquary at archive.org
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-- The Indian Antiquary, A Journal of Oriental Research in Archaeology, Epigraphy, Ethnology, Geography, History, Folklore, Languages, Literature, Numismatics, Philosophy, Religion, &c., &c., edited by Richard Carnac Temple, C.I.E., Major, Indian Staff Corps., Vol. 23, 1894
-- The Indian Antiquary, A Journal of Oriental Research in Archaeology, Epigraphy, Ethnology, Geography, History, Folklore, Languages, Literature, Numismatics, Philosophy, Religion, &c., &c., edited by Richard Carnac Temple, C.I.E., Major, Indian Staff Corps., Vol. 24, 1895
-- The Indian Antiquary, A Journal of Oriental Research in Archaeology, Epigraphy, Ethnology, Geography, History, Folklore, Languages, Literature, Numismatics, Philosophy, Religion, &c., &c., edited by Richard Carnac Temple, C.I.E., Major, Indian Staff Corps., Vol. 25, 1896