China–India Studies: Emergence, Development, and State of the Field TANSEN SEN This essay traces the development of China–India studies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in order to take stock of the field, which has witnessed a surge in publication over the past two decades. The assessment presented here weaves the main shifts in China–India political relations with the emergence of various strands of China–India scholarship, since the two aspects often intersect. The major lacuna in the field, this essay argues, is a framework needed to analyze the complex connections and the pertinent comparisons between China and India. It contends that research on China–India topics should ideally attempt to combine comparative and connective frame- works with analyses that transcend geographic, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries to address this lacuna. Keywords: Asia, area studies, China, China–India, comparisons, connections, India, methodologies, Sino-Indian studies INTRODUCTION I N THE MID-1940S, TWO journals incorporating the term “Sino-Indian” in their titles appeared in Shantiniketan, India. The first of these, published in 1946, was called Sino-Indian Studies and was edited by the French-trained Indian Sinologist P. C. Bagchi (1898–1956). A year later, the Chinese scholar Tan Yunshan 譚雲山 (1898–1983), based at Cheena Bhavana, launched the Sino-Indian Journal: An Organ of the Sino-Indian Cultural Society in India. The former described itself as a journal that “deals with Chinese materials on Indian history and civilization. Its main feature is a systematic study and translation of ancient Indian texts that are lost in original but pre- served in Chinese translations. It also deals with various aspects of ancient Sino-Indian relations and connected topics.” The Sino-Indian Journal had a more activist agenda: according to its own description, the “journal will be a new and a strong link in the chain that binds our two countries, [ . . . ] primarily devoted to cultural problems of inter- est to China and India, but while scrupulously refraining from partisanship in politics, it will also seek to promote understanding and co-operation in all matters of vital interest to the common man in both countries.” 1 Tansen Sen (ts107@nyu.edu) is Director of the Center for Global Asia and Professor of history at New York University Shanghai and Global Network Professor at New York University 1 These descriptions appear in the front matter of the inaugural issues of these two journals. The Journal of Asian Studies page 1 of 25, 2021. © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2021 doi:10.1017/S0021911820002417 1