The Tribes and Castes of Bengal

Abstract

T he epigraph on the title pages of The Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary is a line from Homer’s Odyssey . Printed in Greek, it was neither transliterated nor translated, but in modern English it reads: ‘Who are you? From what city, and what parents?’ 1 These were the questions that Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, asked of the goddess Athena when she visited him in disguise in Ithaca. The customs surrounding hospitality are an important theme in the Odyssey and hosts ask the same or similar questions when strangers arrive to be welcomed as guests in several later scenes in the epic. 2 The simplest explanation for Risley’s choice of epigraph is that it was fitting because Telemachus’ first questions to Athena chime with those that ethnographers so often ask the people they are studying.

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