TRADE IN EARLY INDIA: READINGS Edited By Ranabir Chakravarti, Oxford, Rs 650 The Oxford in India Readings has been designed to bring together a selection of important writings and interventions on select themes that have been identified as critical in the making and writing of Indian history. The series has attempted to facilitate the dissemination of the more enduring debates on India's history. The present volume, Trade in Early India, is no exception, and provides an extensive and lucid introduction to the subject of trade in India. The selection of essays is impeccable - they relate to levels of trading activity, organizational features of commerce and their positioning within the social and political milieu. The dominant agrarian profile of south Asian society, and its attendant ethos of power and honour attached to the control of land, meant that the commercial orientation of the subcontinent's political economy was often overlooked. European interest in the exotic wares of India since the age of classical antiquity till the more immediate colonial past produced a refracted understanding of trade as a major civilizational determinant. For Indian historians themselves, it was the discovery of texts such as the Arthashastra and the reassessment of Pali canonical texts that set the parameters for the historical study of India's trade. For long this had been confined to self-congratulatory assertions of commercial dynamism and the inspirational importance of commercial connections with southeast Asia. Subsequently, this made way for more elaborate and detailed analyses of trade items, commercial systems and the organization of banking and credit activities. The nature and constraints of data available for the reconstruction of early Indian trade meant that the nuances of trading activity were missed. This was, however, more than compensated for by the innovative application of literary texts and new methodologies to document the dynamics of trade and exchange activity in the evolution of regional and trans-regional polities in India. The buoyancy of Indo-Roman trade, the movement of merchants and mystics in the Ganges valley in the centuries leading up to the rise of the Buddha, and the close regulation of trade and economic activity by the Mauryan state, were a testament to the commercial basis of India's political economy. The regional variations were especially interesting as western India and the peninsula engendered and sustained a vigorous mercantile tradition, as merchants became critical agents of social and economic transformation. Perspectives on trade assumed an urgency with the debates on Indian feudalism. In the aftermath of the Gupta period, economic processes seemed to favour a crystallization of feudal tendencies which were characterized by declining levels of trade and monetization and the ruralization of the material milieu. Critiques of Indian feudalism argued forcefully for the reconsideration of the extent of trade and urbanization in early medieval India and the importance of rural and locality level trade centres. The information and interpretation made available by these findings permitted a thorough investigation of merchant organizations and networks, and their positioning within the political system and the larger trading system of the Indian Ocean. The vitality of merchant networks, indigenous as well as foreign, not only demonstrated the visibility and strength of south Asia in the trade of the Indian Ocean, but permitted a theoretical excercus into the stages of India's development. It seems fairly clear that trade and commercial activity influenced production and manufacture, as well as the transformation of social groups and the promotion of a rich, cosmopolitan culture. At the same time, it was trade and commerce that gave a distinct inflection to religious experience and organization. A feature that has not as yet received the attention of historians. In fact, this appears to be one of the most promising areas of potential research for the historian of ancient India. Why was it that commerce and the market place became such strong metaphors for reformist religious expression? Why was it that from the days of the Jataka Tales the experience of commerce was particularly liberating and inspirational? Students will find the volume useful. The introduction is extensive - sometimes too general, and occasionally collapsing the major shifts in the historiography on trade into that of more general debates on ancient Indian history. This collapse may have something to do with the way trade and traders were represented in a society whose normative identity remained tied to land and agrarian control.