The term, “tribe” originated around the time of the Greek city-states and the early formation of the Roman Empire. The Latin term, “tribus” has since been transformed to mean, “A group of persons forming a community and claiming descent from a common ancestor”. The Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1911, defines a tribe as a “collection of families bearing a common name, speaking a common dialect, occupying or professing to occupy a common territory and is not usually endogamous though originally it might have been so”. In Indian context the term tribe has never been defined satisfactorily. Tribals in India were considered to be as “backward class” and until 1919 they were termed as “depressed class”. The census of India accorded the different nomenclature for tribals, in 1931 census referred them as “primitive tribes”, 1941 census as “tribes” and 1951 census as “scheduled tribes”. The Constitution of India refers to such communities as “Schedule Tribes”. In Hindi, the synonyms used for “Scheduled Tribes” is “Anusuchit Janjati” and other words like Adivasi, Vanavasi or Adimjati are used as synonyms of tribal.