This is the first complete reprint of Edward Tuite Dalton’s Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal in more than 130 years. The term “Bengal” in Dalton’s time referred to what are now the Indian states of Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Tripura, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Megalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland, and the present-day country of Bangladesh. The new title is a more geographically precise description of the lands and people treated in this classic ethnography. Each tribe described by Dalton is portrayed in stunning lithographs that convey a sense of immediacy free of the staging common to Victorian ethnographic photography. The reader will discover a precious record of a tribal world now all but vanished. As languages and cultures disappear, books like Dalton’s become sole reminders of our immensely rich human diversity. Jon Miceler, a conservationist who has worked among the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh for the last seven years, has written the introduction to this reprint. A companion volume by Miceler will follow which assesses the present day situation of the tribes of the Indo-Tibetan and Indo-Burma borderlands. (With a foreword by Jon Miceler.)