Photo Documentation of Santals by Alain Danielou and Raymond Burnier

Photographs taken by Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) and Raymond Burnier (1912–1968) in the 1950s at a Santal village close to Santiniketan. They are from the Daniélou photographic archives at the India Europe Foundation for New Dialogues (FIND) in Zagarolo, Rome. Alain Daniélou was a French musicologist, Sanskrit scholar and Indologist, who spent a large part of his life in India (1932–1958). He was accompanied on his travels by the Swiss photographer Raymond Burnier. In India, Daniélou divided his time between Santiniketan, Varanasi, Almora, Chennai and Pondicherry. He met and worked with Rabindranath Tagore and became the director of the School of Music at Tagore’s Visva Bharati (World University) at Santiniketan. Well-versed in western music, he took up the study of Indian music and was appointed professor at the Banaras Hindu University in 1949, and later the director of the College of Indian Music. Recognised for his work, he received, among other awards, the UNESCO/CIM prize for music in 1981 and in 1991 a Fellowship from the Sangeet Natak Akademi in India.