William Crooke
Encyclopedia
William Crooke was an English
orientalist
and "the central figure in Anglo-Indian folklore" according to Richard Mercer Dorson. He was a member of a family that had been settled in Ireland for many years, with his father being a doctor in Macroom
. County Cork
. He was educated at Erasmus Smith's
Tipperary Grammar School, before winning a scholarship to the Trinity College, Dublin
and joining the Indian Civil Service.
While an administrator in India, he found abundant material for his researches in the ancient civilization of India. He was also an accomplished hunter. Although a gifted administrator, according to Horace Rose he was "too outspoken a critic of the mechanically efficient 'Secretariat' system" to find favour with his superiors and he was allowed to retire early after 25 years of service in 1895.
Apart from his official duties to which he was heavily devoted, he found ample time to write much on the people of India and their religions, beliefs and customs. In 1910, he was chosen to be the President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association
; and having been for many years a member of the Council of the Folklore Society
, he was elected President of that body in 1911. Re-elected as President of the Society in the following year, he then became the editor of its journal, Folk-lore, in 1915. He continued in this last position till his death at a nursing home in Cheltenham
on 25 October 1923.
In his role as an editor he has been identified for his interventionist approach, as with his work on James Tod's
Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han or the Central and Western Rajpoot States of India which Norbert Peabody believes under Crooke's hand may have become "a cipher for interpreting the Hindu political order writ large".
In 1919 Crooke was awarded a DSc by the University of Oxford
and also became a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire
(CIE). In 1920 he was awarded a DLitt, by the University of Dublin
and then in 1923 was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
for the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and arrived in India on 2 November 1871, having obtained his BA degree from Trinity College, Dublin.
As an Indian Civil Service officer, his tenure was spent entirely in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, the area where the Indian Rebellion of 1857
had come close to causing the collapse of British control in India and which had resulted in jurisdiction being taken from the hands of the British East India Company
in favour of direct control by the British government. During this time, he held charge as Magistrate and Collector of various districts such as Etah
, Saharanpur
, Gorakhpur
and Mirzapur
, and would have held sole power over around 300,000 people with regard to judicial and revenue matters.
believed that if a similar event was to be avoided in the future then it was necessary to obtain a better understanding of their colonial subjects and in particular those from the rural areas. Crooke engaged such a process, working with those subjects in his official capacity and also studying them, although he noted that it was impossible to do both simultaneously because if he asked any general questions during official business then he would be "met with coldness or distrust, or will suddenly find himself unable to make himself unintelligible in the local dialect." These amateur studies led to his 1888 book, A Rural and Agricultural Glossary of the NW Provinces and Oudh, following his contributions to the Indian Antiquary that began in 1882.
Crooke had a burst of activity as a published ethnologist in the field. It began in 1890 when he took over a journal previously edited by Temple, who had moved to Burma. Over the next six years, Crooke's output in the field of ethnography was considerable, comprising the journal, two volumes of Popular Religion and Folklore and the four volumes that make up Tribes and Castes of the North Western Provinces; in addition, he continued to contribute to journals produced by other people.
, Sadhana Naithani believes that the journal demonstrates "the emergence and growth of that brand of ethnography for which Crooke should be better known and in which he differs from most other colonial ethnographers." The defining feature of the journal was that it considered its subjects in the context of the popular culture of the present day rather than dwelling on the past.
Crooke changed the focus of Temple's journal, which had previously contained material from across south Asia but henceforth concentrated on the subject of North India and, in particular, on those areas where Crooke believed the dominant language to be of an Aryan
variety. The April 1891 edition made this clear:
Although intended for the British audience in India, as were numerous other such publications of the time, it was Indians who provided almost all of the content for the revised Notes and Queries format. One in particular featured heavily: Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube. An eager Indian scholar, Chaube first contributed in 1892 and thereafter his input accounted for around a third of each edition, which was rather more than even Crooke supplied. It initially maintained Temple's coverage of a vast range of subjects, from antiquities through folklore, philology
, history, numismatology, ethnology, sociology and religion, as well as examining fields such as arts and manufacture. However, the focus soon narrowed to cover four subject areas, being religion, anthropology, folktales and miscellany. The folktales section had been renamed from "folklore" and its emphasis changed from documenting ancient remedies and suchlike to recording traditional stories.
The work on folklore was to prove important, according to Naithani, even though it came towards the end of a prolonged period during which various missionaries and British colonialists had been documenting the phenomenon. Unlike many other such collections of the time, Notes and Queries generally acknowledged the people who provided folklore information, noted their precise location in the region and also tried to gather information from a broad spectrum of society, although this did not extend as far as including the input of women. It was work in which Chaube was heavily involved as a methodical collector, collator and translator, and the output was based on what were considered to be scientific principles of analysis and depiction. Naithani says of Notes and Queries that
Notes and Queries may not have been well received by the governing elite of the day. Naithani has suggested that Crooke's provision of this outlet for the Indian voices which lamented the loss of the past and the drive towards what the British deemed to be civilisation could have been one reason why he was marginalised within the bureacuracy. The journal ceased publication on his retirement from the ICS, with Rose noting that this was because of "the prevailing apathy and utter lack of official support".
Hinduism and included cult worship of a multitude of local deities which were not formally recognised by the vedas but exerted a greater influence on the rhythms, meanings and decisions of day-to-day life. Crooke's study may have been the first to look at the religion through eyes other than those of missionaries or the Hindu elite and was in the opinion of Naithani, "a counter to the established school of German and British indology, which was obsessed with scriptures, palm-leaf manuscripts and their translation, and the exact age of Indian civilisation ... [It] sought to fill a gap in European intellectual knowledge of India by documenting living traditions in a serious and accessible manner. Crooke conformed to the colonial program but gave it a new interpretation."
Chaube, who was an intelligent scholar with a BA from Presidency College
in Calcutta, subsequently claimed to have assisted with much information in Popular Religion and he resented that his input was not acknowledged by Crooke. His contribution to Tribes and Castes of the North Western Provinces, published in 1896, was only briefly acknowledged in two footnotes. The relative contributions to the latter have been described by Chandrashekhar Shukl: "While Chaube was going places collecting information, Crooke used to sometimes delve into collecting tit bits." Crooke did, however, pay Chaube well and did he did from his own pocket.
A third edition was in preparation at the time of Crooke's death.
- were produced for the Raj government.
Thomas Metcalf has noted that Crooke was involved in a contemporary debate regarding the nature of caste. Whereas Crooke was among those who believed caste to be defined by occupation, that someone was born into a community that traditionally performed work such as cow-herding or barbering, Herbert Hope Risley
believed that there was a racial definition and went to considerable lengths to collect anthropometric
data to support his position. According to Susan Bayly
and for journals such as Folk-lore and those of the (Royal) Anthropological Institute, he wrote books including Things Indian, and Northern India (for the Native Races of the British Empire series). He also edited several other works, such as the memorial edition of Risley's
The People of India, Fryer's New Account of East India and Persia and Tod's Annals of Rajast'han. Among his various studies that were wholly unrelated to India was a draft book called Homeric Folk-Lore; although this was never published, an article on the subject was printed.
Crooke also had an interest in archaeological matters and produced a paper - The Rude Stone Monuments of India - for the Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club in 1905. In 1911 he was President of that body and delivered his Address on the theme of The importance of anthropological investigation. He was also a member of The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society
, of which he sat on the Council in 1901 and 1917.
He was somewhat detached from his much younger wife, Alice, and their five sons, as indeed he had been when in India. They had married in 1884 and one of his grandchildren has said that "Well, it was a strange marriage". Three of the sons predeceased him, two of whom died in World War I
.
Rose wrote of Crooke's contribution to studies of India that
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
and "the central figure in Anglo-Indian folklore" according to Richard Mercer Dorson. He was a member of a family that had been settled in Ireland for many years, with his father being a doctor in Macroom
Macroom
Macroom is a market town in Ireland located in a valley on the River Sullane, a tributary of the River Lee, between Cork and Killarney. It is one of the key gateways to the tourist region of West Cork. The town recorded a population on 3,553 in the 2006 national census...
. County Cork
County Cork
County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...
. He was educated at Erasmus Smith's
Erasmus Smith
Erasmus Smith was an English merchant, landowner and philanthropist in the field of education who lived during a period of political and religious turbulence....
Tipperary Grammar School, before winning a scholarship to the Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
and joining the Indian Civil Service.
While an administrator in India, he found abundant material for his researches in the ancient civilization of India. He was also an accomplished hunter. Although a gifted administrator, according to Horace Rose he was "too outspoken a critic of the mechanically efficient 'Secretariat' system" to find favour with his superiors and he was allowed to retire early after 25 years of service in 1895.
Apart from his official duties to which he was heavily devoted, he found ample time to write much on the people of India and their religions, beliefs and customs. In 1910, he was chosen to be the President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association
British Association for the Advancement of Science
frame|right|"The BA" logoThe British Association for the Advancement of Science or the British Science Association, formerly known as the BA, is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating interaction between...
; and having been for many years a member of the Council of the Folklore Society
Folklore Society
The Folklore Society was founded in England in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts and crafts, customs and belief...
, he was elected President of that body in 1911. Re-elected as President of the Society in the following year, he then became the editor of its journal, Folk-lore, in 1915. He continued in this last position till his death at a nursing home in Cheltenham
Cheltenham
Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...
on 25 October 1923.
In his role as an editor he has been identified for his interventionist approach, as with his work on James Tod's
James Tod
Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod was an English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar.Tod was born in London and educated in Scotland, later joining the East India Company as a military officer. He travelled to India in 1799 as a cadet in the Bengal Army where he rose...
Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han or the Central and Western Rajpoot States of India which Norbert Peabody believes under Crooke's hand may have become "a cipher for interpreting the Hindu political order writ large".
In 1919 Crooke was awarded a DSc by the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
and also became a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire
Order of the Indian Empire
The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1878. The Order includes members of three classes:#Knight Grand Commander #Knight Commander #Companion...
(CIE). In 1920 he was awarded a DLitt, by the University of Dublin
University of Dublin
The University of Dublin , corporately designated the Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin , located in Dublin, Ireland, was effectively founded when in 1592 Queen Elizabeth I issued a charter for Trinity College, Dublin, as "the mother of a university" – this date making it...
and then in 1923 was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Indian Civil Service
William Crooke passed the competitive examinationCompetitive examination
A competitive examination is an examination angwhere candidates are ranked according to their grades. If the examination is open for n positions, then the first n candidates in ranks pass, the others are rejected...
for the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and arrived in India on 2 November 1871, having obtained his BA degree from Trinity College, Dublin.
As an Indian Civil Service officer, his tenure was spent entirely in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, the area where the Indian Rebellion of 1857
Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to...
had come close to causing the collapse of British control in India and which had resulted in jurisdiction being taken from the hands of the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
in favour of direct control by the British government. During this time, he held charge as Magistrate and Collector of various districts such as Etah
Etah
Etah is a town which is also the district headquarters of Etah district of Uttar Pradesh state, India.-Geography:Etah is located at . It has an average elevation of 170 metres ....
, Saharanpur
Saharanpur
Saharanpur is a city and a Municipal Corporation in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. It is the administrative headquarters of Saharanpur District as well as Saharanpur Division...
, Gorakhpur
Gorakhpur
Gorakhpur is a city in the eastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, near the border with Nepal. It is the administrative headquarters of Gorakhpur District and Gorakhpur Division. Gorakhpur is one of the proposed capitals of the Purvanchal state which is yet to be formed...
and Mirzapur
Mirzapur
Mirzapur is a city in the heart of North India, nearly 650 km between Delhi and Kolkata and also equidistant from Allahabad and Varanasi. Located in the state of Uttar Pradesh, Mirzapur has a population of a little over 205,264 and is renowned for its famous carpet and brassware industry...
, and would have held sole power over around 300,000 people with regard to judicial and revenue matters.
Ethnology while in India
In the aftermath of the 1857 revolt, members of the ICS such as Richard Carnac TempleRichard Carnac Temple
Sir Richard Carnac Temple CIE was the British Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and an anthropological writer.-Army and political career:...
believed that if a similar event was to be avoided in the future then it was necessary to obtain a better understanding of their colonial subjects and in particular those from the rural areas. Crooke engaged such a process, working with those subjects in his official capacity and also studying them, although he noted that it was impossible to do both simultaneously because if he asked any general questions during official business then he would be "met with coldness or distrust, or will suddenly find himself unable to make himself unintelligible in the local dialect." These amateur studies led to his 1888 book, A Rural and Agricultural Glossary of the NW Provinces and Oudh, following his contributions to the Indian Antiquary that began in 1882.
Crooke had a burst of activity as a published ethnologist in the field. It began in 1890 when he took over a journal previously edited by Temple, who had moved to Burma. Over the next six years, Crooke's output in the field of ethnography was considerable, comprising the journal, two volumes of Popular Religion and Folklore and the four volumes that make up Tribes and Castes of the North Western Provinces; in addition, he continued to contribute to journals produced by other people.
Notes and Queries
Temple's journal was renamed from Punjab Notes and Queries to North Indian Notes and Queries and first appeared under that new name in 1891. Published from AllahabadAllahabad
Allahabad , or Settled by God in Persian, is a major city of India and is one of the main holy cities of Hinduism. It was renamed by the Mughals from the ancient name of Prayaga , and is by some accounts the second-oldest city in India. It is located in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh,...
, Sadhana Naithani believes that the journal demonstrates "the emergence and growth of that brand of ethnography for which Crooke should be better known and in which he differs from most other colonial ethnographers." The defining feature of the journal was that it considered its subjects in the context of the popular culture of the present day rather than dwelling on the past.
Crooke changed the focus of Temple's journal, which had previously contained material from across south Asia but henceforth concentrated on the subject of North India and, in particular, on those areas where Crooke believed the dominant language to be of an Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
variety. The April 1891 edition made this clear:
Although intended for the British audience in India, as were numerous other such publications of the time, it was Indians who provided almost all of the content for the revised Notes and Queries format. One in particular featured heavily: Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube. An eager Indian scholar, Chaube first contributed in 1892 and thereafter his input accounted for around a third of each edition, which was rather more than even Crooke supplied. It initially maintained Temple's coverage of a vast range of subjects, from antiquities through folklore, philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, history, numismatology, ethnology, sociology and religion, as well as examining fields such as arts and manufacture. However, the focus soon narrowed to cover four subject areas, being religion, anthropology, folktales and miscellany. The folktales section had been renamed from "folklore" and its emphasis changed from documenting ancient remedies and suchlike to recording traditional stories.
The work on folklore was to prove important, according to Naithani, even though it came towards the end of a prolonged period during which various missionaries and British colonialists had been documenting the phenomenon. Unlike many other such collections of the time, Notes and Queries generally acknowledged the people who provided folklore information, noted their precise location in the region and also tried to gather information from a broad spectrum of society, although this did not extend as far as including the input of women. It was work in which Chaube was heavily involved as a methodical collector, collator and translator, and the output was based on what were considered to be scientific principles of analysis and depiction. Naithani says of Notes and Queries that
Notes and Queries may not have been well received by the governing elite of the day. Naithani has suggested that Crooke's provision of this outlet for the Indian voices which lamented the loss of the past and the drive towards what the British deemed to be civilisation could have been one reason why he was marginalised within the bureacuracy. The journal ceased publication on his retirement from the ICS, with Rose noting that this was because of "the prevailing apathy and utter lack of official support".
Popular Religion and Folklore
Crooke's Popular Religion and Folklore was more successful with the British audience than Notes and Queries. It was published firstly in 1894, quickly selling out and then being re-issued as a two volume revised and illustrated edition in 1896. This pair of volumes examined the reality of Hindu worship in northern India from the perspective of its popular manifestation. In rural areas, practical Hinduism differed dramatically from organised vedicVedic
Vedic may refer to:* the Vedas, the oldest preserved Indic texts** Vedic Sanskrit, the language of these texts** Vedic period, during which these texts were produced** Vedic pantheon of gods mentioned in Vedas/vedic period...
Hinduism and included cult worship of a multitude of local deities which were not formally recognised by the vedas but exerted a greater influence on the rhythms, meanings and decisions of day-to-day life. Crooke's study may have been the first to look at the religion through eyes other than those of missionaries or the Hindu elite and was in the opinion of Naithani, "a counter to the established school of German and British indology, which was obsessed with scriptures, palm-leaf manuscripts and their translation, and the exact age of Indian civilisation ... [It] sought to fill a gap in European intellectual knowledge of India by documenting living traditions in a serious and accessible manner. Crooke conformed to the colonial program but gave it a new interpretation."
Chaube, who was an intelligent scholar with a BA from Presidency College
Presidency College, Kolkata
Presidency University, Kolkata, formerly Hindu College and Presidency College, is a unitary, state aided university, located in Kolkata, West Bengal. and one of the premier institutes of learning of liberal arts and sciences in India. In 2002 it was ranked number one by the weekly news magazine...
in Calcutta, subsequently claimed to have assisted with much information in Popular Religion and he resented that his input was not acknowledged by Crooke. His contribution to Tribes and Castes of the North Western Provinces, published in 1896, was only briefly acknowledged in two footnotes. The relative contributions to the latter have been described by Chandrashekhar Shukl: "While Chaube was going places collecting information, Crooke used to sometimes delve into collecting tit bits." Crooke did, however, pay Chaube well and did he did from his own pocket.
A third edition was in preparation at the time of Crooke's death.
Tribes and Castes
The four volumes of Tribes and Castes of the North Western Provinces - the area now encompassed by Uttar PradeshUttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
- were produced for the Raj government.
Thomas Metcalf has noted that Crooke was involved in a contemporary debate regarding the nature of caste. Whereas Crooke was among those who believed caste to be defined by occupation, that someone was born into a community that traditionally performed work such as cow-herding or barbering, Herbert Hope Risley
Herbert Hope Risley
Sir Herbert Hope Risley KCIE CSI was a British ethnographer and colonial administrator, a member of the Indian Civil Service who conducted extensive studies on the tribes and castes of Bengal. He is also remembered for the formal application of the caste system to the entire Hindu population of...
believed that there was a racial definition and went to considerable lengths to collect anthropometric
Anthropometry
Anthropometry refers to the measurement of the human individual...
data to support his position. According to Susan Bayly
Studies in retirement
Crooke left India in 1896 after 25 years service spent entirely in the Northwestern Provinces and Oudh. He received a generous pension, as was usual for employees of the ICS and returned to England with a reputation for scholarship, particularly in the field of folklore. Thereafter he spent his retirement working principally on matters relating to the study of India and of folklore generally. Aside from contributing articles for the Encyclopedia of Religion and EthicsEncyclopedia of Religion and Ethics
The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics is a 12-volume work edited by James Hastings, written between 1908 and 1927 and composed of entries by many contributors. It covers not only religious matters but thousands of ancillary topics as well, including folklore, myth, ritual, anthropology,...
and for journals such as Folk-lore and those of the (Royal) Anthropological Institute, he wrote books including Things Indian, and Northern India (for the Native Races of the British Empire series). He also edited several other works, such as the memorial edition of Risley's
Herbert Hope Risley
Sir Herbert Hope Risley KCIE CSI was a British ethnographer and colonial administrator, a member of the Indian Civil Service who conducted extensive studies on the tribes and castes of Bengal. He is also remembered for the formal application of the caste system to the entire Hindu population of...
The People of India, Fryer's New Account of East India and Persia and Tod's Annals of Rajast'han. Among his various studies that were wholly unrelated to India was a draft book called Homeric Folk-Lore; although this was never published, an article on the subject was printed.
Crooke also had an interest in archaeological matters and produced a paper - The Rude Stone Monuments of India - for the Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club in 1905. In 1911 he was President of that body and delivered his Address on the theme of The importance of anthropological investigation. He was also a member of The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society
The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society
The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society was founded on 21 April 1876. It is a registered charity, number 202014.The aims of the society are to "...promote the study of the history and antiquities of Bristol and the historic county of Gloucestershire, to encourage their conservation...
, of which he sat on the Council in 1901 and 1917.
He was somewhat detached from his much younger wife, Alice, and their five sons, as indeed he had been when in India. They had married in 1884 and one of his grandchildren has said that "Well, it was a strange marriage". Three of the sons predeceased him, two of whom died in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Rose wrote of Crooke's contribution to studies of India that