indus pottery showing patterns and sculptures showing textiles

1. • India has a diverse and rich textile
tradition. The origin of Indian
textiles can be traced to the Indus
valley civilization. The people of
this civilization used homespun
cotton for weaving their garments.

14. • Excavations at Harappa and Mohen -jo-
Daro, have unearthed household items like
needles made of bone and spindles made
of wood, amply suggesting that homespun
cotton was used to make garments.
Fragments of woven cotton have also been
found from these sites.

17. • Though silk is associated with China, which
had a highly developed sericulture industry
during the Neolithic period, 4000 years ago,
it was also produced in India after the
monks brought it from China and from the
earliest times and was treated as a cloth of
purity, to be used for ritual purposes.

18. • Buddha had permitted bhikkus the use of
kauseya-pravare, a silken chadar. Though no
actual examples exist, literary references to silk
weaving with wild or uncultivated silk was known
in India previous to recorded history. We know
that the forests of Bengal and Assam had a
range of Bombaycidae and Satumidae cocoons.
These were collected by the tribals and woven
by the people of the plains.

19. • According to Confucius, it was
in 2640 B.C. that the Chinese
princess Xi Ling Shi was the
first to reel a cocoon of silk
which, legend also has it, had
dropped into her cup of tea.
From that historic moment, the
Chinese discovered the life
cycle of the silk worm and for
the next 3000 years were to
keep their monopoly of silk.

20. • In the 3rd Century B.C., Chinese silk
fabrics were beginning to find their way
throughout the whole of Asia, and were
transported overland to the west, and
by sea to Japan, in those long
itineraries known as the silk roads. It
was in Asia that the Romans
discovered these wondrous fabrics but
they knew nothing of their origin.

21. • In 552 A.D., the Emperor Justinian sent
two monks on a mission to Asia, and
they came back to Byzantium with
silkworm eggs hidden inside their
bamboo walking sticks. From then on,
sericulture spread throughout Asia
Minor and Greece.

22. • In the 7th Century, the Arabs conquered
the Persians, capturing their
magnificent silks in the process, and
helped to spread sericulture and silk
weaving as they swept victoriously
through Africa, Sicily and Spain. In the
10th Century, Andalusia was Europe's
main silk-producing centre.

23. • It is said that when Buddha attained
Nirvana (eternal rest), his body was
wrapped in a Benares fabric, which shot
rays of dazzling blue, red and yellow.

25. • The first literary information about textiles in India can
be found in the Rigveda, which refers to weaving. he
Rig-Veda refers to the hiranyadrapi or a shining, gold
- woven cloth,
• the Mahabharata to the manichera and Valmiki's
Ramayana describes Ravana, the demon god, as
donning a gold fabric.
• Pali literature mentions the Kaseyyaka (silk of
Benares) worth a hundred pieces of silver. The
ancient Indian epics-Ramayana and Mahabharat also
speak of a variety of fabrics of those times. The
Ramayana refers to the rich styles worn by the
aristocracy on one hand and the simple clothes worn
by the commoners and ascetics.

26. • The weaving of fine, gossamer-like silk has been
a tradition in Benares since 500 B.C. During the
Mughal period (from the early 16th through the
mid-18th century), Islamic religion forbade the
depiction of animals and people, thus fostering
the elaborate floral brocades that made Benaras
famous. This is when motifs such as the
creeping vine and the mango design, the
inspiration for European paisley, developed.

29. • Ample evidence on the ancient textiles of India
can also be obtained from the various sculptures
belonging to Mauryan and Gupta age as well as
from ancient Buddhist scripts and murals (Ajanta
caves). Legend has it that when Amrapali, a
courtesan from the kingdom of Vaishali met
Gautam Buddha, she wore a richly woven semi
transparent sari, which speaks volumes of the
technical achievement of the ancient Indian
weaver.