What we know about Indian long-distance exchange before the Common Era began is perhaps not enough to offer systematic conclusions about trade and merchants. We do know that a few regional nodes of commerce emerged and that the sites where these nodes appeared possessed both unique and shared geographical characteristics. Trading zones did not appear randomly along the extensive coastline, but formed in the deltas of major rivers, with the river providing access to towns and villages inland. Although little can be said about commercial organization beyond the existence of guilds, we do know that the merchants who traversed these zones were major benefactors of religious institutions. Indeed, religion was one of the enduring cultural exports of these times.

The capitals of the major states were located inland; the mainstay of the states was land, not trade. Formally, statecraft recognized the kingly duty to protect merchants, but not enough is known about how that principle was practiced. Commercial law received legitimacy from its links with both the state and religion. Some of these political, spatial, and cultural markers of commercial activity in the subcontinent were to prove remarkably long lasting.

This chapter considers what we can reasonably infer about the broad patterns of long-distance economic exchanges in the first millennium of the Common Era.