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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2015
This article traces the consilience of science and mythology in the history of fossil research in India: this is a narrative in which Indian fossil research met the Orientalist discovery of the Indian past. It demonstrates that in exploring the geological evolution of Indian fossils, British researchers such as Hugh Falconer invoked animals from the Puranas, picking up on a tradition of mythological hermeneutics first developed in India by the likes of William Jones. In exploring the nuances of this intellectual approach, the article thus identifies a hitherto obscured historical trajectory regarding the making of geology in colonial India.
The research is funded by the Leverhulme Trust project, ‘An Antique Land: Geology, Philology and the Making of the Indian Subcontinent, 1830–1920’, held by Pratik Chakrabarti at the University of Kent/University of Manchester.
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