Definition of anthropology:
The term anthropology has been derived from two Greek words, anthropos and logos. The meaning of the former is man and the latter, science. Therefore, anthropology is the science of man. But its scope differs from that of the other sciences of man. Anthropology studies the different aspects of the life of man right from the date of his origin up to the present day. It therefore, embraces a vast field. Anthropology can be called as the whole study of man as it views him from different angles, e.g. physical features, differences, cultural variations, social, political, religious, and other affairs. Herskovits has rightly remarked that anthropology is the study of man and his work. But the exact definition of anthropology had aroused many problematic situations in the former days. Broca defined it as the natural history of the genus Homo and the “Science whose objective is the study of humanity considered as a whole, in its parts, and in relationship to the rest of nature.” Serge, in the year 1932, conducted an international survey when he invited the personal opinion regarding the definitions of the terms anthropology and ethnology, and also the boundary between these two fields from seventy one scholars in this line. But the opinions became heterogeneous due to the inter-dependences of many other branches of sciences with anthropology in each step of the letters advances towards development.
