Notes of a Russian Traveler: N.M. Karamzin Reads Afanasy Nikitin

N.M. Karamzin was the first to call Afanasy Nikitin a merchant and compare him to European diamond traders. The opinion expressed by Karamzin became almost generally accepted. However, a comparison of the «Troitsky» copy of the literary monument known to Karamzin with other variants of the text shows that the historian had no direct grounds to consider Afanasy Nikitin a merchant. An appeal to other texts by Karamzin allows us to conclude that India for him is primarily associated with wealth and the opportunity to get rich by trading in jewelry – a narrative characteristic of European civilization in the 18th–19th centuries. Karamzin uses the text he discovered to confirm his own ideas about trade as an instrument for connecting different cultures. This context of Karamzin's reflections was not taken into account by later historiography, which uncritically accepted the interpretation of the great historian. On the contrary, the general context of the appearance of Afanasy Nikitin's notes in Slavia Orthodoxa remained almost unnoticed.