India’s foreign trade is as old as the civilization itself. Indus valley had trade relations with Sumer, Elam and Tylos and perhaps an indirect contact with Egypt. This trade continued even after the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization.

“The theories that the ancient Egyptians used Indian muslin to wrap their mummies or that the queen Hat-Shepsut (1481 BC) imported sonter incense from India or that the Ophir to which king Solomon (800 BC) sent an expedition for gold was in India, cannot be confirmed.

But there is little reason to doubt that the elephants that are found on the black obelisk of Shalmaneser (858-824 BC) along with apes and Bactrian camels had crossed the Hindukush and that the teak wood used for furnishing the temple of the Moon at Ur and the palace of (604-562 BC) was sent from India by the Persian Gulf.” All such trading links flourished and expanded in the early centuries of the Christian era on much wider scale.