New Delhi, Nov. 1 -- Guru Nanak seems like an unlikely starting point for a book on trade and commerce in India during the Mughal period. The founder of Sikhism is among the many figures of history that author Jagjeet Lally deploys to bring us a fascinating glimpse of the daily rhythms of religious and commercial life in this era, from the time that Babur set up the Mughal dynasty to its ignominious end by the middle of the 18th century. The cast of characters who act as our eyes into the past is equally intriguing: failed merchants, court munshis, foreign diplomats and Jain traders, whose accounts of their travails have been expertly deployed for insights into a world where the sacred and the commercial were inseparably entwined.

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