The central Institute of Indian Languages set up in 1969 is entrusted with the responsibility of developing Indian languages through research training and material production.The Indian languages are at various stages of development from the point of view of the extent of elaboration of their functions and they require different treatments.Development of the tribal languages of the country involves many issues of policy,implementation and academic ontribution.Some of them are to be reduced to writing and most of them need codification from the point of view of standardisation,preparation of grammar,dictionary and such other linguistic materials and production of written literature.

    One of the primary activities of the Institute relating to its work on tribal languages is writing a grammar.The grammar is not only the first step in the direction of codification of the language but also is a basic material for the teaching and learning of the language.It also provides materials for the typological and areal comparisons for languages and for studies of language universals.The theoretical notions about grammar have changed substantially in the recent de ades and many of the notions are to be tested with data from various little known languages.It is hoped that the grammar series of the Institute will fulfil at least partially these demands from linguists and language planners.

    The grammars of various tribal languages,it is hoped,will lead to a handbook of Indian languages,which will be of great use to the students of linguistics in India.India has a long grammatical tradition and it is now absorbing the grammatical model for the description of Indian languages derived out of both traditional and modern developments.

                                                                                                        (E.ANNAMALAI)
                                                                                                             Director