Robert Sutherland Rattray, CBE, known as Captain R. S. Rattray (1881, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

  – 1938) was an early Africanist

Africanist

Africanist may refer to:*A specialist in African studies*A strand of African nationalism during the activism against apartheid in South Africa particularly associated with the Pan Africanist Congress...

 and student of the Ashanti. He was one of the early writers on Oware

Oware

Oware is an abstract strategy game of Akan origin. Part of the mancala family, it is played throughout West Africa and the Caribbean. Among its many names are Ayò , Awalé , Wari , Ouri, Ouril or Uril , Warri , Adji , and Awélé...

, and on Ashanti gold weights.

Life

Rattray was born in India of Scottish parents. In 1906 he joined the Gold Coast

Gold Coast (British colony)

The Gold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.-Overview:The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial...

 Customs Service. In 1911 he became the assistant Distrct Commissioner at Ejura

Ejura

Ejura is the largest maize producing district in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. It is in the far north of the region, near the Afram River. Ejura is connected by highways with the towns of Mampong, Yeji and Techiman. It is home to the Digya National Park / Kujani Game Reserve.It is also the location...

. Learning local languages, in 1921 he was appointed head of the Anthropological Department of Asante. He retired in 1930. He was killed while flying a glider in 1938.

Works

• 'Vernon Blake', The Aesthetic of Ashanti.

• Ashanti proverb
  Proverb
  A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
  
  s: the primitive ethics of a savage people: translated from the original with grammatical and anthropological notes, 1916 (repub. 1969). With a preface by Sir Hugh Clifford.
• Ashanti, 1923.
• (ed.) Religion and art in Ashanti, Oxford University Press, 1927
• Ashanti Law and Constitution, 1929.
• Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales. Collected and translated by ... R. S. Rattray ... and illustrated by Africans of the Gold Coast Colony, 1930
• The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2 vols., 1932

External links