Network effects

It is a pleasure to read Dr Lally's engagements with the economy of this far-flung overland trade, furnishing serialised and tabular data

India and the Silk Roads, the History of a Trading World

Author: Jagjeet Lally

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: XIV+515

Price: Rs 799

Jagjeet Lally’s preference for using the word “roads”, in plural, for his incisive and empirically rich narrative of the South Asian overland linkages with Central Asia — in fact, with Eurasia — is a hallmark of his study of the communication network that was labelled Seidenstrasse in the 19th century in German, literally the Silk Road. As it was neither a single overland route nor a uniform communication system, the perception of a singular route is inapt. No less central is the point that