ABSTRACT
It is more or less well known now, thanks to the pioneering researches of several scholars in the field in the last few decades (Sinha 1956-70; Husain 1995; Chaudhury 1995; Chatterjee 1996), that the Armenians played a significant role in the commercial and economic life of India, especially Bengal which was the one of the most prosperous provinces of the erstwhile Mughal Empire in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. By the early eighteenth century, the great Mughal Empire had already disintegrated, bringing in its train political chaos and economic decline in most parts of north India. But Bengal was a singular exception where trade, commerce and economy as a whole flourished under its almost independent nawabs (title of the rulers). It is to be noted here that it was Bengal textiles and silk, together with few other commodities, which were most sought after in the then world.
