SOME ISSUES IN HISTORIOGRAPHY 1 S Bemal describes history of science as "the story of the development of the social enterprises of science". The story "presents the general lines of the development of scientific theory and practical technique from the origins of human society till today. In a fundamental sense it is a picture of how man got his living, beginning with food gathering in the wild, in a way differing little from that of many animals, and ending, for the present, in the mechanical exploitation of multiple resources, in which more and more of the processes of Nature are being directed to human service." I have been talking ofBemaFs vision of history of science, and hence, I shall not add anything further. Of immediate relevance to us, however, are the implications of Ber-nal's historiography for history of science in India. How do we describe, analyse, and interpret the indigenous base, the tradition of science and technology in Indian history ? Considerable amount of work in history of science in India, since the 1960's is devoted to documenting and assessing the value of technical and scientific contributions in the indigenous tradition. What kind of questions are provoked by BemaFs historiography ? In analysing the interaction between science and society in India, besides history of science, there is now considerable work done in economic history and socio-cultural history. How is this material to be interpreted and synthesized ? From the methodological side, there is a further issue: to identify the premises for a comparative perspective. The Chinese case has been studied in considerable detail by Joseph Needham. What kind of framework in the comparative perspective do we develop, to analyse the Indian case ? In this task, what have we to learn from Bernal's work, how do we benefit by the method, the range and the sweep of his Science in History. These are generalities. I shall however return to considering a few specific instances exemplifying the relevance of BemaFs views for historiography of science in India. Bemal raises a major historical question: "How can the study of science in history help to explain the particular track of industrial and scientific advance ? How was it that it followed the course it did: from the fertile crescent ofBabylonia and Egypt, through the Mediterranean from Greece to Italy, to settle in its creative fromative period of the seventeenth century round the North Sea, from then to spread in our time all over the world".7 Bemal's story is set in the global setting; and history of science in India is part of this wider story. The task of comparative methodology is to test, elaborate and contextualise the casual explanatory premises (why and how, science and technology, advanced the way it did, in this or that civilization) in the light oft&e present state of knowledge in the history of science in particular and the larger socio-economic and cultural history of a particular civilization, say, India. In describing the track of scientific advance in various civilizations, Bernai says'that in the ancient world some half-dozen patterns ofciviliza-