This book presents of the origin and nature of religion. The view point taken in this book is that religion has built up through activities which appeared in primitive social group, activities which were either spontaneous or playful or which appeared with reference to meeting various practical needs of life.

This book takes the reader through various phases of religion from early societies to modern times. Various religions have been dealt with starting from their beginning to their development in modern times. All the topics are described in detail. This volume attempts to describe Religious Anthropology in its length and breadth a lucid manner.

Culture is a set of learned behaviours, beliefs, attitudes, values and ideals that characterize a particular society or population. Simply speaking, culture is the way a particular group of people acts and behaves. The discipline of Sociocultural Anthropology describes why people differ in their ways of acting and thinking. To help develop this understanding, all aspects of culture, ranging from cultural development, change over time and customs ranging from birth rituals to burial customs are dealt with in this volume. The 'social anthropological' tradition of old world and 'cultural anthropological' tradition originating in North America are combined in this book reflecting the growing similarity of both worlds.

The aim of this volume is to provide a concise repository of number of major concepts that an anthropologist might use. This book is divided into two parts. Part one covers the relationship in families-their origin and their culture. Part two covers beliefs, values, attitudes and ideals.

Urban anthropology is a new and still developing branch of anthropology. Cities are important and significant research areas and anthropology is making significant contributions to this study. An urban anthropologist can play a significant role in these studies. Anthropology brings a unique approach to the study of urban phenomena. Urban anthropologist studies population of urban areas that can extend from most primitive to most complex industrial urban locales. The goal of this volume is to study urban locales in relation to the societies and cultures in which they occur with a holistic approach and to provide a concise repository of number of major concepts.

According to 1991 Census, the population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were 13.82 crore and 6.78 crore constituting 16.48 per cent and 8.08 per cent respectively of the country's total population. As compared to 1981 Census, there has been slight increase in Scheduled Tribe population (7.85 per cent of the population). While the Constitution has prescribed certain protective measures and safeguards for Scheduled Tribes, Government of India is giving all the facilities for their proper development. After Independence, several schemes were launched for the betterment of Scheduled Tribes. The Central and State Govt. are spending crores of rupees for their upliftment through five year plans.

The present collection of research papers/articles on the Scheduled Tribes are multi-disciplinary investigation into various aspects of socio-economic problems being faced by the Scheduled Tribes in India. The contributors have also given suggestions for improving their conditions. Thus, this outstanding book will be indeed of immense use to researchers, students of various disciplines and policy makers of the country.