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Synopsis Encyclopaedia of Indian Tribes and Castes is the result of the need felt by the scholars, researchers, teachers, and administrators for a reference work on Indian ethnology which can rise above the usual complexity and confusion in finding reliable and trustworth information in this vast and highly important area. The vast and detailed information contained in the pages of this pioneering work makes it an ideal and invaluable reference tool for the confirmation of sociological, anthropological, ethnological, historical, and cultural facts about the tribes and castes spread all over the Indian subcontinent. Careful research and compilation of an enormous amount of data has produced a collection of about 11,000 tribes and castes, organized by an alphabetical order, in a convenient and otherwise unavailable format. The entries, varying in length and scope of coverage, do not omit any tribal identity howsoever obscure or difficult in finding information on. The result, therefore, provides extraordinary opportunities to the readers for socio-anthropological or administrative research or for the purpose of reference. The present work that attempts to put together a large number of identities symbolized by names. Its value lies in its identification of this large number of identities, providing a raw material that can be used in various ways as all such material can be. The biggest and most valuable contribution of this encyclopaedia is in the painstaking process of documentation in which all the references and sources have been clearly indicated. This would greatly help both the scholar and the administrator to trace the source, time and place in which a particular identity has been created. A careful comparative scrutiny would help in clearing up many administrative doubts and scholarly inquisitiveness as to identities and their reproduction as well as suppression. The reader might find many names here that are not found in official documents and many that do not exist in any official discourse. Many may be listed as tribes in one place and caste in another. The marathon effort that has gone into creating this work is towards building up a comprehensive and reliable data base that would be useful in many different ways. To the critical scholar it would provide raw material that can be reanalyzed and reinterpreted, to the researcher it may provide a clue to identifying a potential "field" of study and to the administrators it would provide a wealth of base line information. It is our hope that the volumes would also be beneficial to the people so identified and named here as "tribes". Grouping information systematically, 'guided by the historical sense' and with a clear view of the information needs of the reader, the Encyclopaedia of Indian Tribes and Castes is intended, above all, to be 'a methodical compendium of social knowledge.