SPLENDID INDIAN TEXTILES : Cotton | Cloth | Culture BY SHELLY JYOTI

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THE SPLENDID TEXTILES OF INDIA: TRADE|COTTON| CLOTH By Shelly Jyoti 2012

Textiles were a principal commodity in the trade of the pre-industrial age and India’s were in demand from china and Mediterranean. Indian cottons were prized for their fineness in weave, brilliance in colour, rich variety in designs and a dyeing technology which achieved a fastness of colour unrivalled in the world-‘Woven cargoes-Indian textiles in the East’-by John Guy

In the centuries before 1800, the Indian subcontinent throughout the history was the most important cotton manufacturing region in the world. From Punjab to the North and West India to Bengal and South India, the cotton shrub or tree was essential to peasant crop rotations and integral to peasant’s strategies to survival. Between 1200-1800 CA cotton was the cultivated crop in virtually every region of the Indian sub continent. Author Hamida khatoon Naqvi has enumerated some thirty five different varieties of cotton cloth and that were produced and consumed in this region in 1500BC. Indian textile workers supplied a vast sub-continental market in which cotton was a wide margin .The fibre of choice for textiles both for garments as well as decorative was cotton. While silk was held in higher esteem and was considered more auspicious material, its high cost made it prohibitive for all except wealthy. In addition to the vast sub-continental market, Indian cotton goods were demanded throughout the world. Both material and textual evidence attests to the consumption of Indian cloth from Gujarat to Sindh, Egypt to Iran and other countries in the west Asia from as early as 11th century. Textiles were also recognised means of storing wealth, a readily convertible form of wealth. A reference from Duarte Barbosa


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