‘Let traders and karwans on both sides come and go, and let the precious products and ordinary commodities which may be in my territory be conveyed by them into thine, and those of thine, in the same manner, let them bring into mine’, Chingiz Khan to Sultan Muhammad Khwarazm Shah, on the occasion of his march towards Persia (Khwarizim) through Afghanistan, in Minhaj-ud-Din Abu Umar-I-Usman's Tabakat-I-Nasiri: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia from 810 AD to 1260 AD and the Irruption of the Infidel Mughals into Islam (Tr). Raverty, H.G. 1881, Reprint, New Delhi, Oriental Books Corporation, 1970: 966.

There was, we know, another ‘Asian Trade’ in existence in South Asia: an Asian trade of caravans, mules and nomadic tribesmen who traversed mighty passes, steep ravines and inhospitable terrain in a vast trade route spanning the cities of Asia, Arabia, Mongolia and China. This ‘Asian (overland) Trade’ was very different from Asian trade in Asian waters; nevertheless due to accessibility of sources it has always been this latter (sea) trade that has been treated under the idiom of ‘Asian Trade’ for the purposes of historical research.

We have seen that in the eighties the frontiers of this new subject–Asian Sea Trade–were pushed ahead by the provocative works of Ashin Das Gupta on the Malabar and Surat, by Om Prakash–and to a certain degree by Sushil Chaudhuri–for Bengal, by Aniruddha Ray on Cambay, by Sinappah Arasaratnam for the Coromandel and by K.N. Chaudhuri for the whole of the Indian Ocean World.