Castes and Tribes of Southern India is a seven-volume encyclopedia of social groups of Madras Presidency and the princely states of Travancore, Mysore, Coorg and Pudukkottai published by British museologist Edgar Thurston and K. Rangachari in 1909.

[2] He was a disciple of Risley, who believed in a racial theory for the basis of caste, and borrow anthropometric equipment from the Asiatic Society of Bengal, including a Lovibond Tintometer, to assist in his survey of Madras.

Thurston had to overcome suspicions felt by his subjects during the conduct of the survey, and sometimes had to rely on his official position as a representative of the government in order to obtain the measurements that he needed.

[3] Nature magazine, in its September 1910 issue, described the work as a monumental record of the varied phases of south Indian tribal life, the traditions, manners and customs of people.

Thurston was the curator of the government museum in Madras, and clearly saw the study of racial types among the Indians as an extension of his daily routine of labelling and pinning butterflies and of collecting and categorising the varieties of plants.