38 SOCIAL SCIENTIST excluded from the pre-Independence political history of the country. To ensure that no doubt is left regarding the implications of this proposition, he points out that he envisaged little scope in the ancient Indian political history of his conception for the study of Achaemenid, Alexandrian, Indo-Greek and Pahlava invasions or other events which took place outside the territory of the present Indian Union. 'The rigour of logic demands that', he says. Such protection of the present into the past, however, seems illogical to me. As inheritors of a pa$t going back to millennia and with roots in many lands and among many peoples, we are not authorized to arbitrarily divide Indian history into segments of our choice. The Empires of Asoka, Kaniska and Akbar transcended the present-day national boundaries and they have to be studied as a whole and not in parts. The Aryan problem cannot be properly understood within the confines of the present-day political boundaries of India. It is true that in the post-Independence period Indian archaeologists have identified more than seven hundred sites of the Indus Valley or Harappa Culture of the Pre-Harappan, Harappan and Late Harappan phases inside the country and excavated to a varying degree as many as forty of them,6 but a complete picture of this culture can be had only if such important non-Indian sites as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro are also included in our study. Themes like slavery, feudalism, imperialism, modernization and social justice have transnational boundaries and need to be studied in their wider world context. Reducing the coverage of ancient Indian political history in terms of the present geographical boundaries will ill serve the cause of our discipline. Objectively speaking, most of us do not have a composite all-India perspective even in terms of our present political boundaries. Researchers in north India generally know little and care less about south Indian history and vice versa; and a further narrowing of the coverage of ancient Indian political history is unlikely to prove a step in the right direction. I also find little substance in Professor GoyaFs categorical remark that The age of European domination of Indian historiography is not yet over* (surely the thirteen volumes alone of The Indian Historical Review which I have edited from its inception disprove that); and yet I have not the slightest hesitation in duly acknowledging the bare truth that non-Indian historians have contributed significantly to the understanding of all aspects of our ancient history, including the political.7 The concern expressed at Indian political history being 'viewed and written by either Europeans or English-educated Indians' is, therefore, misplaced.8 Knowledge and research of a high order in fact brook no artificial barriers. Though specificity as to time and place is important in history,9 there is no doubt about the 'interconnectedness of human history' and historical scholarship being an 'international enterprise', as Professor Akira Iriye noted in his Presidential address to the American Historical Association.10 The road to progress in ancient Indian political history, therefore, lies not