Asian Giants in Indian Works

Though India’s contact with two of the predominant nations of East Asia, China and Japan, has been uniformly strengthened in the socio-economic, cultural, and political fields during the last few decades, it has received a special boost during the nervous nineties. And as we stand on the threshold of the 21st century and visualize the possible dawning of ‘the Asian Century’, their ties on account of increasing awareness of the intra-continental proximity are bound to assume the dimensions of queer closeness and reciprocity. It was in this extraordinary context that bibliographic exploration of the place (particularly) of the two East Asian giants of the century in publications emanating from all parts of India, was found of tremendous interest. Also, as a byproduct of a continuing indexing project on china and Japan under way at the Department of Chinese and Japanese Studies, University of Delhi, it held out the prospects of commanding exclusive and expeditious academic interest among the China and Japan specialists and scholars the world over. As this project of assembling more than a thousand references-whole books and research these related to Chinese or Japanese Studies and relevant chapters or sections in composite works unrelated to China or Japan-itself has already entailed the scanning of over forty thousand Indian publications produced during the period, 1990-96 and beyond, it was considered worthwhile to spread the compilation of references to relevant publications of the whole decade over two Parts. The present Part mirrors in a subject-wise sequence the varying trends and transitional phenomena noticed in the publications. The second Part hopefully will not only conclude the decade-long hyperactive phase of the intra-continental ties but also appropriately reflect the areas that have still remained uncovered in terms of research investigations undertaken exclusively in the Indian subcontinent.