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Warp and Weft: Producing, Trading and Consuming Indian Textiles Across the Seas (First–Thirteenth Centuries CE)

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Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures, and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean

Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

Abstract

Historically India has been a producer and exporter of textiles across the Indian Ocean world. A cultivated version of cotton in South Asia—both Gossypium arborem (tree cotton) and G. herbaceum (short staple cotton)—is dated to the fifth millennium BCE in north–west India. The chapter starts with the consumption pattern of textiles in the ancient period in the Indian subcontinent and then traces the market for indigo-dyed patterned cloth across the seas. The chapter goes on to discuss transformations in the organization of trade networks in the ancient period and, finally, the multiple uses of cloth in the subcontinent. The broader issue relates to the role of textiles as a means of communication across the shared cultural ethos of the Indian Ocean.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 39–44.

  2. 2.

    Moira Tampoe, Maritime Trade between China and the West (Oxford: BAR International Series 555, 1989), pp. 131–153.

  3. 3.

    Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Letters and Documents on the India Trade,” Islamic Culture 37, vol. 3 (1966): p. 196.

  4. 4.

    Jonathan M. Kenoyer, “Ancient Textiles of the Indus Valley Region,” in Tana Bana: The Woven Soul of Pakistan, ed. Noorjehan Bilgrami (Karachi: Koel Publications, 2004); John Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilisation (London: A. Probsthain, 1931), pp. 33, 194–5, 585–6.

  5. 5.

    Dorian Q. Fuller, “The spread of textile production and textile crops in India beyond the Harappan zone: An aspect of the emergence of craft specialization and systematic trade,” in Linguistics, Archaeology and the Human Past, Occasional Paper 3, ed. Toshiki Osada, and Akinori Uesugi (Kyoto: Indus Project, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, 2008), pp. 1–26.

  6. 6.

    Rita P. Wright, David L. Lentz, Harriet F. Beaubien, and Christine K. Kimbrough, “New evidence for jute (Corchorus capsularis L.) in the Indus civilization,” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 3 February (2012) (online). https://www.harappa.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Jute.pdf accessed on 22nd November 2016.

  7. 7.

    Judith Cameron, “Iron and cloth across the Bay of Bengal: New data from Tha Kae, central Thailand,” Antiquity 85, no. 328 (2011), pp. 559–567.

  8. 8.

    Judith Cameron, “Indian Textile Fragments from the site of Pontanoa Bangka, Sulawesi, Indonesia,” Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology 7/8 (2013), pp. 1–8.

  9. 9.

    Patrick Olivelle, King, Governance and Law in Ancient India: Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 29.

  10. 10.

    Hartmut Scharfe, Investigations in Kautalya’s Manual of Political Science (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1993), p. 290; Samuel Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World, vol. II (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1906/1958), p. 133.

  11. 11.

    Gouri P. Lad, “Textiles in the Vinaya Pitaka,” Bulletin of the Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute 49 (1990): pp. 227–235.

  12. 12.

    Paul Nietupski, “Clothing: Buddhist Perspectives,” Encyclopaedia of Monasticism A – L, ed. William M. Johnston (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000), pp. 307–9.

  13. 13.

    Ramanlal Nagarji Mehta, and S.N. Chowdhary, Excavations at Devnimori (Baroda: Maharaja Sayajirao University, 1966), p. 186.

  14. 14.

    Shobhana Gokhale, Kanheri Inscriptions (Pune: Deccan College Post-graduate & Research Institute, 1991), pp. 70–71.

  15. 15.

    George L. Hart, and Hank Heifetz, The Purananuru: The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. xvi.

  16. 16.

    Hart and Heifetz, The Purananuru, p. 169.

  17. 17.

    Hart and Heifetz, The Purananuru, p. 224.

  18. 18.

    Hart and Heifetz, The Purananuru, p. 186.

  19. 19.

    Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei, pp. 194–5, sections 6, 14, 31, 32, 36, 39, 48, 49, 51, 56, 59, 63.

  20. 20.

    Shelomo Dov Goitein, and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 17.

  21. 21.

    Goitein and Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages, pp. 175–6.

  22. 22.

    Jenny Balfour-Paul, Indigo (London: British Museum Press, 1998).

  23. 23.

    Moti Chandra, Costumes, Textiles, Cosmetics and Coiffure in Ancient and Medieval India (New Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1973), p. 12.

  24. 24.

    Torkel Brekke, “The Early Samgha and the Laity,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 20, no. 2 (1997): p. 27.

  25. 25.

    Arthur W. Ryder translated Pañcatantra, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925) Book I: The Blue Jackal, pp. 122–129.

  26. 26.

    G. Buehler, “New Jaina Inscriptions from Mathura”, Epigraphia Indica I (1892): no. 5, p. 384.

  27. 27.

    Moti Chandra, Costumes, Textiles, Cosmetics and Coiffure, p. 93.

  28. 28.

    Moti Chandra, Costumes, Textiles, Cosmetics and Coiffure, p. 86.

  29. 29.

    Phyllis Granoff, “Luxury Goods and Intellectual History,” Ars Orientalis 34, (2007): pp. 151–7.

  30. 30.

    Granoff, “Luxury Goods and Intellectual History,” pp. 158–9.

  31. 31.

    Moti Chandra, Costumes, Textiles, Cosmetics and Coiffure, p. 33.

  32. 32.

    V.K. Jain, Trade and Traders in Western India (New Delhi: MunshiramManoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 1990, p. 139).

  33. 33.

    Meera Abraham, Two Medieval Merchant Guilds of South India (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1988), p. 105.

  34. 34.

    A.L. Basham, “The Mandasor Inscription of the Silk Weavers,” Essays on Gupta Culture, ed. Bardwell L. Smith (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983).

  35. 35.

    John Peter Wild, and Felicity C. Wild, “The Textiles,” in Berenike 1995: Preliminary Report of the 1995 Excavations at Berenike (Egyptian Red Sea Coast) and the Survey of the Eastern Desert, ed. S.E. Sidebotham, and W. Z. Wendrich (Leiden: Centre of Non-Western Societies, 1996), p. 246.

  36. 36.

    Ruth Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 49.

  37. 37.

    Wild and Wild, “The Textiles,” p. 251.

  38. 38.

    John Peter Wild, and Felicity C. Wild, “The Textiles,” in Berenike 1996: Report of the Excavations at Berenike (Egyptian Red Sea Coast) and the Survey of the Eastern Desert, ed. S.E. Sidebotham, and W. Z. Wendrich (Leiden: Centre of Non-Western Societies, 1998), p. 230.

  39. 39.

    Wild and Wild, “The Textiles,” (1998), pp. 235–6.

  40. 40.

    Steven E. Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), p. 249.

  41. 41.

    Kathleen Strange Burke, and Donald Whitcomb, “Quseir al-Qadim in the thirteenth century,” Ars Orientalis 34 (2007): pp. 82–98.

  42. 42.

    Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt, pp. 52–4.

  43. 43.

    Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt, p. 55.

  44. 44.

    Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt, p. 86.

  45. 45.

    Himanshu Prabha Ray, Monastery and Guild: Commerce under the Satavahanas (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986); Himanshu Prabha Ray, “The Western Indian Ocean and the Early Maritime Links of the Indian Subcontinent,” Indian Economic and Social History Review XXXI, no 1 (1994): pp. 65–88; Himanshu Prabha Ray, The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia (Cambdrige: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

  46. 46.

    E. Senart, “The Inscriptions in the Caves at Nasik”, Epigraphia Indica, VIII, no. 8 (1905–6): pp. 82–85, no. 12.

  47. 47.

    D.C Sircar, “Charter of Visnusena samvat 649,” Epigraphia Indica XXX, no. 30 (1953–4): pp. 163–181.

  48. 48.

    Norman A. Stillman, “The eleventh-century merchant house of Ibn ‘Awkal (A Geniza study),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 16 (1973): pp. 15–88.

  49. 49.

    Noboru Karashima, “South Indian Merchant Guilds in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia,” in Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia, ed. Hermann Kulke, K. Kesavapany and Vijay Sakhuja (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009), p. 54.

  50. 50.

    Y. Subbarayalu, “Anjuvannam: A Maritime Trade Guild of Medieval Times,” in Nagapattinam to Suwarnadwipa: Reflections on Chola Naval Expeditions, ed. H. Kulke, K. Kesavapany and V. Sakhuja (Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, 2009), pp. 163–166.

  51. 51.

    Karashima, “South Indian Merchant Guilds,” pp. 135–57.

  52. 52.

    Jan Wisseman Christie, “The medieval Tamil-language inscriptions in Southeast Asia and China,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 29, no. 2 (1998): pp. 239–268.

  53. 53.

    Jan Wisseman Christie, “Asian Sea Trade between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries and its Impact on the States of Java and Bali,” in Archaeology of Seafaring: The Indian Ocean in the Ancient Period, ed. Himanshu Prabha Ray (New Delhi: Pragati Publications, 1999), pp. 221–270.

  54. 54.

    Jan Wisseman Christie, “Texts and ‘Textiles’ in Medieval Java,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 80 (1993): pp. 181–211.

  55. 55.

    Patrick Olivelle, King, Governance and Law in Ancient India – Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2.10.1–63, pp. 119–122.

  56. 56.

    Olivelle, King, Governance and Law in Ancient India 2.7.2–3; 3.1.7, pp. 111–112; p. 179.

  57. 57.

    Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, Inscriptions of the Kalachuri-Chedi Era, vol. IV of Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (Ootacamund: Government Epigraphist for India, 1955), p. cxlii.

  58. 58.

    Goitein and Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages, p. 61.

  59. 59.

    John Guy, Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), p. 8.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ludwig Maximillian University, Munich, Germany

    Himanshu Prabha Ray

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Pedro Machado

  2. Department of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Sarah Fee

  3. Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Gwyn Campbell

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Ray, H.P. (2018). Warp and Weft: Producing, Trading and Consuming Indian Textiles Across the Seas (First–Thirteenth Centuries CE). In: Machado, P., Fee, S., Campbell, G. (eds) Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures, and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58265-8_11

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