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Synopsis The Anthropological Survey of India launched the people of India Project on 2 October 1985 to generate an anthropological profile of all communities of India, the impact on them of change and development process and the links that bring them together. As part of this all India project, the ethnographic survey of all the 115 communities of Assam was taken up for the first time in collaboration with local scholars. The results of this survey were discussed at the workshops held in Shillong/ Guwahati in May 1988. The space now known as Assam emerged as a distinct econo-cultural region early in history. It was peopled by the legendary kirata, whose descendants still identify themselves with the Mahabharata tradition, and with tantricism and shaktism. It has been a melting pot of ethnic stream, the most important being the Mongoloid and the Caucasoid, the Australoids constitute the substratum of most of Assam populations. Medieval Assam saw the rise of Assamese as a language, neo-vias