This carefully edited book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, ATAL'97, held in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, in July 1997.
The 25 revised full papers presented were selected from a total of 76 submissions. The book is divided into sections on methodologies, architectures and infrastructures, coordination planning and monitoring, formal methods, theories, and architectures and methodologies. Like its predecessors published in the Intelligent Agents series, this volume specifically...

At the turn of the century and the beginning of the new Millennium, India has made extraordinary industrial and economic progress. At the same time the sub-continent is faced with innumerable problems in the area of basic social services. Religion plays an important role in the interpersonal relationship and social interaction of the people. Religion is not only worship and prayer, but dictates such factors as who could come in physical contact with the other and who has the right to draw water from a well and who is deprived of it. Because of these factors it is necessary to look at the...