"Discussion of the religious status and political rights of the tribals is rendered more difficult by the term commonly used to designate them: âdivâsî. Christian missionaries and secularists have popularized the belief that this is a hoary self-designation of the tribals (unmindful that this would prove their intimate familiarity with Sanskritic culture, as the term is a pure Sanskrit coinage), e.g.: 'These peoples are called adivasis, which means 'first inhabitants'. Like the American continent, India has its Indians... Contrary to a widespread belief, this term is not indigenous. It is not listed in the 19th-century Sanskrit dictionary of M. Monier-Williams, a zealous Christian who would gladly have obliged the missionaries if only he had been aware of the term. The Sanskrit classics attest the awareness of a separate category of forest-dwellers, but used descriptive terms for them, e.g. âtavika, from atavî, 'forest'. ...The imposition of the term adivasi during the colonial period was itself an instance of replacing facts of history with an imaginative theory."