The Rashtrakutas and their Times c22.15

c22.15

Contemporary documents do not give any adequate idea of the industries of the period; but we can get a fair notion from the accounts of foreign merchants of the earlier and later periods. Cloth industry was the principal one. From the Periplus we learn that cloth was largely exported from Bharoch and Damarike i. e. Dravid country. (16) The principal centres in the Deccan were Minnagar, Gujarat, Ujjain, Paithan and Tagara. (17) Most of these continued to be centres of cloth industry down to the 17th century A.D. Marco Polo states that Gujarat, Thana and Warangal used to manufacture and export considerable quantities of cloth in the 13th century, (18) and Tavernier notes that prodigious quantities of clear and white calicos were manufactured in Burhanpur and Berar, and were transported thence to Persia, Turkey, Poland, Arabia and Cairo. (19) It is therefore but fair to conclude that during our period, which is almost midway between these two, the industry may have been equally thriving. Paithan and Warangal were, and still are, particularly famous for their muslins. About the cloth manufacture at these places, Marco Polo says,—‘These are the most delicate buckrams and of the highest price; in sooth they look like the tissue of spider’s web. There can be no king or queen in the world but might be glad to wear them.’(20) Paithani, the name given to the high class silken saries of ladies in the Deccan, is significant in this connection.