Tribes and castes of the central provinces of India

To understand the complex caste system of India, one has first to make a systematic study of the beliefs and theories to which the tradional Indian society has been conditioned thro ugh the ages. In order to govern in the most effective manner, the Britishers became alive to this need soon after their rule was established in this part of the world and they sponsored detailed ethnographic and historical studies of the people. of the subcontinent. Even though conducted for a purely selfish rea sons, these studies are, however, proving very useful even in indepen dent India. They are to a large ex tent, the basis of our sociological researches on the one hand, and implementation of egaliarian meas ures for what are now considered Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, on the other.

The present study by R. V. Russel and Rai Bahadur Hira Lal is by all means the pioneering one of its type. Apart from the fact that it ex plored what was till then an unkno wn area vis-avis the caste and tri bal patterns, it chose to go into the entire background, of the historical and sociological bases of the system of castes and tribes instead of concentrating only on the enumerative and statistical details of the ethnographical data collected in the rather vast area, now more or less constituting the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India.

As expected, almost every ethno graphic group and sub-group has been taken up for a thorough dis cussion: the perspective is made complete by comparative analysis of castes found in far flung areas having apparently, no direct contact with the area under study. This aspect of comparative ethnography, indeed rarely undertaken even to day, adds to the value of this vital book.

The four-volume study is divided into two parts. Part I deals on the theoretical postulates of the ethnographic matrix, the subject matter of the first volume: Part II, subdivided into the remaining three volumes, deals with comprehensive descrip tions of each and every group of aboriginal castes and tribes.

Along with the absorbing text, the large number of illustrations (127 spread over the four volumes) make this study extremely compelling This is a must for all collections on India generally as well as specialized sections on anthropology, socio logy and history.