Production and distribution of economic goods in India was based on the co-existence and, at times, inter-penetration of a subsistence and a commercialized sector. As the bulk of the population lived in the villages and the bulk of their needs for goods and services was satisfied through production for use and a network of reciprocal obligations, exchange for a relatively small proportion of economic activity. Yet exchange of goods, found at virtually every level and sphere of economic life, was impressive in its magnitude and complexity. The dominance of subsistence-oriented production was modified by surpluses and deficits necessitating multi-tiered and multi-faceted commercial activity.

The rural market was very much a feature of the intra-local trade of the period. ‘Even in the smallest villages’, wrote Tavernier, ‘rice, flour, butter, milk, beans, and other vegetables, sugar and other sweetmeats, dry and liquid, can be procured in abundance.’ In the large villages, usually under a Muslim official, sheep, fowl and pigeons were on sale, while in exclusively Hindu villages one could find ‘only flour, rice, vegetables and milk’. It was not necessary, Tavernier added, ‘that those who travel in India should provide themselves with food beforehand’ and described how he found a band of 4,000 pilgrims travelling without any prior arrangements for food supply. Other travellers confirm this account of abundant food purchasable everywhere. In Bengal – our literary evidence suggests – the good raja or zamīndār was expected to establish markets for the periodic hāt.