L. K. A. Iyer was born in 1861. He was in an orthodox family in Lakshmi Narayana Puram village of Palghat district of what is now Kerala. Krishna Iyer, his father, a Sanskrit scholar, died early. He came to anthropology in 1900. He came into ethnography in 1902 and remained in its forefront. He was also regarded as the founder of field studies in Indian anthropology. In 1903, The Ethnographic Survey of Mysore was started under Dewan Bahadur Nanjundeyya as Superintendent of Ethnography. The Superintendent died in the middle of this work and thus Iyer was handed this work on 7 August 1924. Between 1904 to 1906 twelve monographs were published from the Government Press, Ernakulum on a tribe or caste. These and others were then revised by him (after being requested by the then Diwan) from July 1907 to appear in a single volume with illustrations.
In 1914, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee chaired as the President of the first Indian Science Congress which took place in the premises of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta. He was interested to include Anthropology as a part of the Indian Science Congress. In that session, Ananthakrishna Iyer was chosen as the President of the section on Ethnology, which later became the section on Anthropology and Archaeology. By this time, he was well known for being a very acute researcher in India. In that first session he had presented two papers. One was ‘Study of Marriage Customs of the Cochin State’ and the other was on the ‘Namboothiri Brahmins of Malabar.’ At that Science Congress, as L.K.A. Iyer was leaving for Ernakulum, he was told that he might be able to serve Calcutta University.
Another two studies of his read out at the Indian Science Congress in 1915 in Madras was entitled the ‘Prehistoric Monuments of the Cochin State’ and the ‘Vettuvans of North Malabar.’ In 1916, in the Science Congress at Lucknow he presented papers on ‘Malabar Magic’ and ‘The Thandapulayans.’ Also, in 1916, from February 14-19 and 21-23, L.K.A. Iyer gave a series of nine Readership lectures on the ethnology of India in the Madras Museum. He read out ‘Anthropological Notes on the Eurasians of Indo-Portuguese Descent in Cochin’ at the Indian Science Congress in Bangalore in 1917. In 1918, he read out ‘Serpent Shrines in Malabar, Cochin and Travancore’ at the Indian Science Congress, Lahore. He retired from the Cochin State Service in 1920. Iyer went on to become the President of the Indian Science Congress in the Anthropology and Archaeology section again in 1927 and then in 1937 (presenting a paper on ‘An Ethnographical Study of the Coorgs’), the only one to become the President thrice.
In 1924, the Maharaja of Travancore and Cochin assigned to him the responsibility of creating the State Museum, Zoological Gardens and Industrial Bureau. He was teaching in the Department of Anthropology at Calcutta all the year round, and in the vacations conducted his fieldwork studies. Much of his ethnography centred around life cycle rituals, seeing caste and tribe as isolated entities rather than seeing their linkages with neighbouring groups. After his retirement in 1933, he visited Florence, Rome, Paris, Munich, Berlin, Cambridge, Vienna and other places in Europe, presenting a series of lectures on Indian Ethnology. In London, at the International Congress of Anthropology, he presented a paper on ‘Agricultural Basis of Religion in South India.’ At the Institute of Anthropology in Florence he presented a paper on ‘Primitive Culture of South India.’
Due to his legendary status, Anthropology in India was jokingly referred to as ‘Ananthropology.’ His house in Tollygunje was a library where students visited and were lectured on ethnography and race, with special references of C.G. Seligman. His son wrote An Account of the Tribes and Castes of Travancore. His grandson L.K. Bala Ratnam was also an anthropologist He died on 25 February 1937 in Madras.
Study of Indian society: the Tribals and the Caste groups
Ananthakrishna had keen interest in exploring the development of human society. He was keen to record the changes occurring in the various aspects of life of the tribals while documenting facts about tribal customs and institutions. But he could not ignore the exploitative changes that occur to the tribe. As in case of Kadars who, he stated that, their frequent contact with the people of the plains has deprived them of their simple habits and brought them to a modified condition of life. He stated that their encounter with modernity resulted in their dilapidated cultural condition. At a time when anthropologists restricted themselves to the study of preliterate communities, he attempted to study literate communities such as Nambudiris, Nayars, and the Syrian Christians.
Ananthakrishna modified the earlier format (twenty seven point format developed H. H. Risley) opted for the census operations of ethnographic survey of India into 14 point one, which suited to the Indian population. In his Book, Cochin Tribes and Castes, he described each tribe and caste in a 14 point format which included the introduction, their origin and tradition, habitation, marriage and customs, pregnancy and child birth, inheritance, tribal organization, religion, magic and sorcery, funeral ceremonies, occupation, physical and mental characteristics, food, social status and a conclusion. He both adopted and adapted the ethnographic tradition of his times. He rejected the administrative way of collecting information about the people. During his field studies, he used to interact with the people in their natural environment. Ananthakrisha gave much importance to the description of lifecycle ceremonies. Ananthakrishna arranged tribes and castes of Cochin in the order of their social status, instead of following the western rule of alphabetical arrangement. In case of fieldwork, he repeatedly emphasized the importance of participant observation.