Preface The idea of culture area started as a device for classifying cultures and clusters of culture traits of geographical regions. Kroeber has defined culture zone as "an area set off from others by a relative internal homogeneity".In the study of culture, the concept of culture area is important because it demonstrates how, in the dimensions of space as in its inner organizations the unities of civilization, and the inner variables that go to make-up these unities are maintained. The idea of culture area (zone) which was earlier developed is also applied to the national level cultures or civilizations as that of India. Kroeber was of the view that culture areas are defacto social facts. By mapping culture contents of different regions of India, Gardner has produced three different maps which broadly emerge in terms of regions but do not overlap completely. This exercise of Gardner points to the difficulty in drawing specific, sharply defined, definitive cultural areas in India. The tentative position of Gardner on the problem is that India is a culture area, with some fringe zones and tribal enclaves, the two main regions are north and south separated by roughly the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Linguistic boarders. The views of Karve are similar in this respect. If one were studying India as a whole and look upon it as a single culture area, then regions like Karnataka would be a sub-area. On the contrary if one were to look upon each region as a culture area then the constituent parts of a state along cultural variation lines may also be called sub-sub areas.

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