In early historic India the shreni was a corporate body of artisans, merchants or financiers that set standards, fixed prices, trained apprentices, arbitrated disputes among members and acted as a banker holding endowments. Recognised in law-texts such as the Arthashastra and the Dharmashastra and recorded in inscriptions, guilds could issue their own seals, lend at interest and fund temples and public works. They concentrated particular crafts in dedicated city quarters and gave urban economic life a durable institutional structure. Some shrenis even fielded their own militias and outlasted the dynasties around them.
The guild gave pre-modern Indian cities a self-governing economic order that organised craft quarters, credit and public patronage. It is an important non-European parallel to, and antecedent of, the corporate associations that shaped later urban economies.