\nThe question asks about a “Survey of India project” launched in the 1860s by a British ethnographer. While the formal Survey of India is a mapping agency, the term might be used here loosely to refer to a major large-scale documentation effort *about* India that included ethnographic aspects.
\n– William Wilson Hunter (A) was appointed to organize a statistical survey of India in 1869 (late 1860s). This project, which led to the creation of the “Statistical Accounts of Bengal” and eventually the “Imperial Gazetteer of India”, involved collecting vast amounts of data on geography, statistics, history, and also socio-cultural aspects, including ethnographic details. While not solely an ethnographer, Hunter initiated this major survey project in the specified timeframe, and his work contained significant ethnographic information.
\n– Lord Dufferin (B) was a Viceroy (1884-1888) and not an ethnographer or survey initiator in the 1860s.
\n– Herbert Hope Risley (C) is a prominent ethnographer known for his anthropometric surveys and works like “The Tribes and Castes of Bengal” (1891) and “The People of India” (1908). His major systematic ethnographic work began later than the 1860s.
\n– Edgar Thurston (D) was another significant ethnographer who worked in South India and published “Castes and Tribes of Southern India” (1909). His work is also from a later period.
\nGiven the timeframe of the 1860s and the options provided, W.W. Hunter is the most plausible figure who initiated a large-scale survey project covering various aspects of India, including ethnographic information, around that period.
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