Castes and Tribes of Southern India
Title page of the first volume of Castes and Tribes of Southern India
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| Author | Edgar Thurston, K. Rangachari |
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| Country | British India |
| Language | English |
| Genre | encyclopedia |
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Publication date
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1909 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
Castes and Tribes of Southern India is a seven-volume encyclopedia of social groups of Madras Presidency and the princely states of Travancore, Mysore, Coorg and Pudukkottai published by British museologist Edgar Thurston and K. Rangachari in 1909.
The seven-volume work was one of several such publications resulting from the Ethnographic Survey of India project which was formally instituted by the Government of British India in 1901. The Survey was intended to record details of the manners, customs and physical features of Indian castes and tribes using in part the anthropometric methods that had first been used in India by Herbert Hope Risley for his own survey of the tribes and castes of Bengal. An eight-year period of funding was allotted for the purpose.
The British government in India appointed a Superintendent of Ethnography for each province. Thurston, who had been Superintendent of the Madras Government Museum since 1885, had already conducted some ethnographic work in his studies of the hill tribes of Nilgiris District, published in 1894, and elsewhere. He was appointed Superintendent for Madras Presidency, while L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer and N. Subramania Iyer were respectively appointed Superintendents for the princely states of Cochin and Travancore. The reports for the two princely states were later integrated with Thurston's work to form the Castes and Tribes of Southern India, as were the results of Thurston's earlier researches into the hill tribes. The state of Mysore was allocated to Thurston for anthropometric survey but excluded for ethnographic survey. In his investigations in Madras Presidency, Thurston was assisted by K. Rangachari of the Government Museum.
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