E. T. Dalton’s Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal

Record summary

Edward Tuite Dalton’s Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal includes observations about communities, ritual practices and beliefs that can involve spirits, the dead and supernatural agency. It is relevant as a nineteenth-century administrative source for locating regional traditions that later writers may have recast as ghost reports. The work is descriptive rather than a controlled investigation, and its population classifications are historically situated. Specific passages should be checked against later ethnography and vernacular sources, especially where Dalton appears to infer belief from limited observation or colonial informants.