The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.14

v1.c30.14

The region occupied by the southern ‘border peoples’ includes what is now known to ethnologists as the Central Belt and still contains the largest groups of primitive tribes to be found in India. In the course of twenty-two centuries the policy of the government remains unchanged in regard to these representatives of the earliest inhabitants of the sub-continent. They continue to govern themselves in accordance with their traditional tribal constitutions and are subject only to such control as may be deemed to be indispensable: