In India, early farming communities or neolithic cultures have been identified in five different geographical regions, to which has been added another one from Pakistan. The temporal and spatial distribution of these regions has been discussed in this paper together with the evidence relating to the antecedent stage of the Neolithic cultures. It should be observed that in none of these regions it has been possible to work out the transition from the stage of food-gathering to that of food-producing, but certain potential areas where future investigations might yield fruitful results have, no doubt, been identified. The evidence on the domestication of animals and plants, as available, is given separately with a view to highlighting (a) the lacuna in our knowledge and (b) the desirability for further work. The early farming communities in India are found to be chronologically later than their counterparts in western and southeast Asia.