Introduction: Trans-Himalayan Routes as a Web of Cultural, Social, and Economic Connections

In different forms and at different scales, roads and pathways have shaped the existence of a multitude of different communities inhabiting different ecological niches in the Himalaya. The steep and lush southern Himalayan slopes, home to a wide range of ethnic communities with different characteristics and livelihoods, have thus been connected to the dry Tibetan plateau inhabited by high-altitude farmers and pastoralists. Trade has historically been the way in which these different communities have related to each other in multiple forms. However, relations were not only about exchanges of goods, they were also about kinship, religious ties, and the transfer of knowledge and technologies and well as literary artifacts.

The emphasis currently given to ‘roads’ in the development of these regions echoes much older pathways and ancient connections while pointing to their radical transformation. Cultural production on the Tibetan plateau and in the Himalayan regions would not have been possible without a web of relations enacted over the centuries through mountain trails and trading routes. Manuscripts and prints, both as texts and as material artifacts, tell stories not only of books carried along these pathways, passed on, copied, and translated but also of palm leaves, paper plants and paper, wood, ink, gold, pigments, and dyes which were processed, traded and often presented as merit-making offerings.