ABSTRACT
As there was brisk trade in Bengal during the period, there was bound to be lot of financial transactions. But as transfer of ready money/cash from one place to another was not always safe, there had to be some means for transfer of the necessary funds, sometimes quite a large amount, even to distant places. As for example, huge amount of cash had to be transferred quite often from Murshidabad,1 Kasimbazar,2 Hughli,3 or Calcutta and other trade marts and cities to places in northern India like Agra, Delhi, Patna,4 Lahore, Multan, or Surat, Ahmedabad, etc. in western India. Not only that, even the surplus revenues of Bengal, to the tune of Rs. 1.3 million a year, had to be sent to Delhi as tribute to the Mughal emperors. Luckily, the credit market in Bengal during the period under study was highly organized and efficiently managed. There was indeed a remarkable growth of the financial machinery for credit and exchange, and the specialized activities of a large class of merchants, especially shroffs, undoubtedly point towards the fact that merchant capital and commercial organization were highly developed in the early modern period. And it was the hundis which served the purpose of transferring cash and/or securing loans very well. It was not only the European trading companies which resorted to hundis for their transactions but also the Asian merchants and even the Armenians used this instrument for their commercial activities.
