Assessments of India's past as a manufacturing nation differ widely. According to one view, in pre-colonial days the country had an industrial sector of exceptional buoyancy. An unending flow of precious metals poured into the country from all over the civilized world in payment for her fine manufactures. Western observers from Pliny to Bernier noted with disapproval the region's economic role as the sink for the world's precious metals. The vigorous export trade had its counterpart in national self-sufficiency: imports were redundant and an affluent adequacy of output characterized the economy of the self-contained ‘village republics’. Thus India was a leading manufacturing nation at least at par with pre-industrial Europe. She lost her relative advantage only after Europe achieved a revolution in technology, and her prospects of following suit were undermined through the intervention of colonial rule.

This image of high economic achievement has been questioned by others. Gibbon's description of the staples of oriental trade as being ‘splendid and trivial’ has been held to be true of India's exports as well. Besides, given the transport technology of the period, the volume of exports, it is pointed out, was bound to be negligible in relation to the overall magnitude of economic activity. Technology in general was rather primitive and almost totally stagnant: by inference, productivity was low and equally stagnant. Self-sufficiency, far from being an indicator of a high level of performance, simply reflected a weak articulation of exchange and hence reinforced a stagnation in manufacturing output.