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Dr. M.C. Joshi (b. Tanakpur, 1944) is the brother of the famous Buddhist scholar, the late Professor L.M. Joshi. He was educated at Gorakhpur and after obtaining his Master’s Degree with a ‘first class first’ in ancient History, Culture and Archaeology in 1966 he joined his alma mater as a Lecturer. Later on he shifted to the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, and in 1970 to the Department of History, University of Jodhpur, Jodhpur, which he is still serving, and from where he earned his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Professor S.R. Goyal, the present work being substantially his Doctoral thesis. Apart from polity and political history Dr. Joshi is deeply interested in the history of religion and art. He has written about a dozen research papers, some of which have been widely acclaimed by Indologists.

Dr. S.K. Gupta (b. 1945) passed M.Sc. (Physics) 1967, M.Ed. in 1971 and obtained Ph.D. Degree in Education in 1974 – all from the University of Kurukshetra. A senior University teacher having nearly two decades of professional standing, he is on the Panel of Experts for Reviewing books for the reputed Journals. A prolific writer, he has five well acclaimed scholarly books to his credit including Guidance an Counselling in Indian Education (1985), Exploring Mental Abilities for Science Talent (1990). Currently Dr. gupta is a Reader in Education at the North Eastern Hill University, Nagaland Campus, Kohima.

Dr. Shankar Goyal (b. 1959), the young and ebullient author of the present monograph, is emerging very rapidly as one of the recognized authorities on the historiography of ancient India. He has already produced three monographs dealing with some aspects of ancient Indian history writing viz. History and Historiography of the Age of Harsha (Jodhpur, 1992), Aspects of Ancient Indian History and Historiography (New Delhi, 1993) and History Writing of Early India (Jodhpur, 1996). He has co-edited a number of works with such eminent scholars as Professors G.C. Pande, B. Ch. Chhabra and Jagannath Agrawal which are directly or indirectly concerned with this discipline, including Political History in a Changing World (Jodhpur, 1992), Reappraising Gupta History (New Delhi, 1992) and S.R. Goyal: His Multidimensional Historiography (New Delhi, 1992). He has also-co-edited several other monographs with Shri M.C. Joshi and Dr. Sobhag Maghur which include King Chandra and the Meharauli Pillar (Meerut, 1989), Spectrum of Nehru’s Thought (New Delhi, 1994) and Rajasthan Bharati, in two volumes (Jodhpur, 1995) and authored more than seventy research articles. His research output in a period of less than six years has been stupendous, and its originality and quality superb, as is evident from the reviews of his works appearing in national and international journals. Dr. Shankar Goyal did his graduation from the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, post-graduation from the Deccan College, Pune, and Doctrate on Main Trends in Indian Historiography Since Independence from the University of Jodhpur, Jodhpur, where he is presently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History.