[1] The field is concerned with the Asian people, their cultures, languages, history and politics.
Within the Asian sphere, Asian studies combines aspects of sociology, history, cultural anthropology and many other disciplines to study political, cultural and economic phenomena in Asian traditional and contemporary societies.
It is a branch of area studies, and many Western universities combine Asian and African studies in a single faculty or institute, like SOAS in London.
The history of the discipline in the West is covered under Oriental studies.
The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) only considers Asia to the east of the Indus River in its scope of "Asian Studies".