SOUTH ASIAN PEOPLE

inhabitants of South Asia. For the purposes of this discussion, South Asia is defined as the subcontinent comprising India and neighbouring Sri Lanka to the south, Bangladesh to the east, Bhutan and Nepal to the north, and Pakistan to the west, together with Afghanistan, which lies to Pakistan's north and west. The Himalayas, along with the related Hindu Kush range to the west, effectively isolate South Asia from the rest of the continent. The Indo-Gangetic Plain, surrounding the Indus and Ganges rivers to the south of the mountains, is comparable to the Huang Ho (Yellow River) valley in China, Mesopotamia in Iraq, and the Nile River valley in Egypt as a site of one of the world's first great civilizations. The semiarid Deccan Plateau occupies most of the remainder of the subcontinent. The physical geography of South Asia ranges from the desert areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India and the permanent snow cover of the mountains to the tropical, monsoon-influenced forests and jungles of peninsular India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. To varying degrees, the remarkably heterogeneous South Asian peoplesmore than 100 languages are spoken in India alonehave in common basic spiritual, psychological, and social tenets derived from the indigenous Hindu and Buddhist religions and imported Isl am. Additional reading Clarence Maloney, Peoples of South Asia (1974), provides an introduction. Broad overviews of the peoples and cultures of India are available in Dhirendra Nath Majumdar, Races and Cultures of India, 4th rev. and enlarged ed. (1961, reissued 1973); The Gazetteer of India, vol. 1, Country and People (1965); David G. Mandelbaum, Society in India, 2 vol. (1970); and Richard Lannoy, The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society (1971). Works concentrating on the tribal peoples of India include Stephen Fuchs, The Aboriginal Tribes of India (1974); S.C. Dube (ed.), Tribal Heritage of India, vol. 1, Ethnicity, Identity, and Interaction (1977); K.P. Bahadur, Caste, Tribes & Culture of India (1977 ), with each volume concentrating on a different region; and Christoph Von Frer-Haimendorf, Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival (1982). R.A. Schermerhorn, Ethnic Plurality in India (1978), focuses on the relationship between 10 minority groups and the rest of Indian society. The ethnology of Pakistan is treated by Akbar S. Ahmed, Pakistan Society: Islam, Ethnicity, and Leadership in South Asia (1986). Peoples and cultures in the Himalayas are explored in Christoph Von Frer-Haimendorf (ed.), Asian Highland Societies in Anthropological Perspective (1981); Chandra Bahadur Shrestha, Cultural Geography of Nepal (1981); Dor Bahadur Bista, People of Nepal, 5th ed. (1987); James F. Fisher, Sherpas: Reflections on Change in Himalayan Nepal (1990); and Nagendra Singh, Bhutan, a Kingdom in the Himalayas: A Study of the Land, Its People, and Their Government, 3rd rev. ed. (1985). The ethnic tensions in Sri Lanka are analyzed in Tissa Fernando and Robert N. Kearney (eds.), Modern Sri Lanka: A Society in Transition (1979); and Committee For Rational Development, Sri Lanka, the Ethnic Conflict: Myths, Realities & Perspectives (1984). Lalita P. Vidyarthi The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica