Author: Janet Rizvi

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13:

This book documents the extraordinarily complex pattern of trade upon which the pre-Independence economy of Ladakh largely depended. Although the trans-Himalayan traffic in subsistence commodities in other parts of the Himalaya has been researched, that in Ladakh has until now remained almost entirely undocumented. The book is based mainly on oral evidence; this is related to documentary sources ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. This intriguing account of Ladakhi trade is spiced with enough personal details of the traders at all levels, to demonstrate that trade' is something more than a matter of routes and commodities, prices and rates of profit; it is an activity carried out by real human beings, profoundly colouring their entire way of life.