Markets,merchants and towns in early medieval Odishā

Abstract

This article addresses the constituent aspects of trade such as commodities of exchange, agricultural and non-agricultural, market centres, traders, towns and their typologies. It also dwells on the issues of metallic money and the region’s participation in maritime trade. Trade and the professional categories associated with it have been situated in the context of the emergence of the mandala territories/sub-regions, their interrelationships and the gradual shaping of a cultural region.