In Sanskrit, a trader is a vanik. The word comes from the root pan to "bargain". From the same root comes the Panis of the Rig Veda, a people the Vedic poets clearly disliked. In hymn 10.108, the Panis hide cattle in a cave and Indra's dog Sarama is sent to find them. Poets call them stingy; people who do not share. So, the merchant enters Indian memory as the man who holds back what others want.
In Chinese, the merchant is shang. It is also the name of the Shang dynasty, which the Zhou overthrew around 1046 BCE. One old explanation says the defeated Shang people, stripped off land, took to trading to survive. Nobody can prove this. But notice the story people chose to tell. The trader as the loser who has to hustle.
