The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India (Vol. 1-4)

The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India is a four-volume ethnological study of the caste system written by Robert Vane Russell. The book is the result of the arrangement made by India's Government for the preparation of an ethnological account, dealing with the inhabitants of each of the principal Provinces of India. Although being a four-volume study, the study is basically divided in two parts. The first part, consisting of volume one, contains articles on the religions and sects of the people of the Central Provinces and the glossary of minor castes and other articles, synonyms, subcastes, titles and names of exogamous septs or clans. The second part, consisting of volumes two, three and four, contains descriptive articles on the principal castes and tribes of the Central Provinces.

Robert Vane Russell (1873-1915) was a British civil servant, known for his role as Superintendent of Ethnography for what was then the Central Provinces of British India. Together with an amateur archaeologist, Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Russell compiled The Castes and Tribes of the Central Provinces, published in 1916. This work was a product of the Ethnographic Survey of India that had been established in 1901.