When Anbu Ram Mulin petitioned Peter the Great in January 1723, asking permission to expand his trade to St. Petersburg, Archangel and beyond Russia to the German state and eastwards to China, he unknowingly represented the apogee of the Indian mercantile diaspora. Not only did Anbu Ram himself fail to advance the diaspora a stage further and make direct contact with European and Asian markets, but the Indian business community rapidly declined after 1723 both in terms of its numbers and its economic influence. Already in 1747 the census showed that the Indian merchant population in the city had fallen to less than half of its former size, and when P. S. Pallas visited forty Indians who still lived in the city in 1793–94 he reported, based upon his knowledge of an earlier visit, that “Everything here … appeared in a more miserable state than formerly, since a part of this people have abjured the religion of their ancestors, and have been incorporated among the citizens of Astrakhan.”