Abstract
The following three papers were read in a symposium on “The South Asian Village” at the eighth annual meeting of the Far Eastern Association in Philadelphia on April 3,1956. A fourth paper, on “The World View of the Punjabi Villager,” contributed by Miss Zekiye Eglar, is not here included because its publication was committed elsewhere. The Opler, Singh, and Dube papers are based on field research sponsored by the India Program of Cornell University and directed by Professor Opler. Comprehensive reports of this research are now in preparation. Since the application of community studies to the study of complex, historic civilizations is still in an exploratory phase, a few words of explanation about the theoretical problems to which all three papers contribute may be in order. The reader will also find it helpful to refer to the earlier symposium in this journal, “Community Studies in Japan and China” (FEQ, XIV, Nov. 1954).
