The geographical limits of the study area (the Indian Subcontinent) are here considered to encompass India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. In addition, the distribution maps include locality data from Afghanistan, Tibet and northern Myanmar. The biological and ecological discussions often include information from Arabia, Iran, the former USSR, China and south-east Asia, especially for those species that are relatively little known. It should be stressed however that only those species that are known to occur in the core study area are included. Therefore, species such as Rhinolophus thomasi that are recorded from northern Myanmar but not from eastern India or Bangladesh are excluded; in the same way, Rhinolophus mehelyi is excluded, for although present in Afghanistan it is not known from Pakistan or India. The synonymies of the species are simplified with the exclusion of all taxa that are not directly relevant to the region. Here, we have relied heavily on the painstaking work of the late John Edwards Hill whose own studies of the bats of the region are summarised in Corbet and Hill, 1992.