Anthropological Studies of Indian Tribes

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Adivasi is the collective term for tribes of the Indian subcontinent, who are considered indigenous to places within India wherein they live, either as foragers or as tribalistic sedentary communities. They comprise a substantial minority population of India, making up 8.6% of India's population, or 104.2 million people, according to the 2011 census. Adivasi studies is a new scholarly field, drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, agrarian history, environmental history, subaltern studies, indigenous studies, aboriginal studies, and developmental economics. It adds debates that are specific to the Indian context. Anthropological survey of India became the biggest anthropological research body of its kind in the world where hundreds of professional anthropologists got their employment, Indian scholars had developed indigenous models intending to apprehend the cultural matrix of India. This comprehensive book is an effort to provide developmental history of anthropology in India and tribal studies in the framework of anthropological models. The book will be an interesting study for students and researchers of anthropological studies.

Jatin Ram Virk is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at S.R.K.G. College, Sitamarhi, a constituent unit of B.R.A. Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. He has attended many national and international seminars. His several research papers have been published in reputed journals.

Adivasi is the collective term for tribes of the Indian subcontinent, who are considered indigenous to places within India wherein they live, either as foragers or as tribalistic sedentary communities. They comprise a substantial minority population of India, making up 8.6% of India's population, or 104.2 million people, according to the 2011 census. Adivasi societies are particularly prominent in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal, and Northeast India, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Though considered to be the original inhabitants of India, present-day Adivasi formed after the decline of the Indus Valley Civilisation, harboring various degrees of ancestry from ancient hunter-gatherers, IVC-people, Indo-Aryan, and Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman language speakers. Adivasi studies is a new scholarly field, drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, agrarian history, environmental history, subaltern studies, indigenous studies, aboriginal studies, and developmental economics. It adds debates that are specific to the Indian context.

Anthropology is a young discipline in India. By the term 'Indian Anthropology, Andre Beteille (1996) wanted to mean the study of Society and Culture in India, by the anthropologists, irrespective of their nationality. There were many anthropologists inside or outside of India who took interest in the study of Indian society and culture. However, anthropology owes its origin in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the ethnographic compilation of tradition, custom and belief of different tribes and caste in various provinces of India. Indian anthropologists borrowed the ideas, framework and procedures of work from western anthropologists and practiced 'self-study instead of studying 'other culture'. But their pattern of work became unique with regard to assumptions, choice of data, criteria of relevance and some other matters. Anthropological survey of India became the biggest anthropological research body of its kind in the world where hundreds of professional anthropologists got their employment. Contact of Indian anthropologists with American anthropologists occurred after the World War II and especially after India's independence. A shift in approach was noted with the intervention of the American scholars.

**Contents and Sample Pages**