Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c5.s2.t8: Cotton
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c5.s2.t8
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Contents
- v1.c5.s2.t8.3 — 3 parts
Cotton
v1.c5.s2.t8.1
Cotton is a fibre plant which belongs to the genus gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae, originally produced in the subtropical zone. There are different categories including African cotton, Asian cotton, upland cotton, island cotton, etc. Asian cotton originated from India. Its Sanskrit name was Karpāsa and it was translated as “吉贝” (jibei) and “劫贝” (jiebei) in Chinese. Fa Yun pointed out in *juan* 7 of *A Collection of Terms in Translation* that “劫波育” (jieboyu) or “劫贝” (jiebei) is silk cotton. It is “迦波罗” officially. The tree is named after its flower and can be woven into cloth. It is named “氎” (die) in Gaochang. It is as big as a tree south of Kophen while its size is small in the north and its shape is like the local mallow. It has a shell which can be cut for a catkin-like flower. It can be woven into cloth.” White cotton meant cotton cloth woven with wild African cotton carried along the Silk Road in Central Asia, and sometimes it also was called Pahat in ancient Turkish. In India, cotton used for cloth was called Tūla, which was translated as 'douluo' in Chinese. Hui Lin described “douluo’ cotton in *juan* 11 of *Sound and Meaning of All Sutras* saying that “douluo cotton was very soft, just like willow catkin or grass catkin”. In *juan* 7 of *A Collection of Terms in Translation*, it was explained: “Douluo cotton can also be called duluo which is the name of a tree. The cotton is from the tree, and it is named so. It is like willow catkin, or translated as willow flower. It is called douluo flower and also known by the name maomao.”
v1.c5.s2.t8.2
Asian cotton
v1.c5.s2.t8.3.1
A piece of plain-woven cloth unearthed in a boat-like coffin in Wuyi Mountain, Chong’an, Fujian, in the early 1980s dates back about 3,000 years. It is the earliest cotton cloth in China which shows that the history of India-China trade in cotton cloth is very long. African cotton (levant cotton) with short and thick fibre was introduced into western China from Africa in the Eastern Han Dynasty (1ˢᵗ to 3ʳᵈ century CE). Cotton cloth and cotton clothes have been unearthed in places such as the southern part of the Tarim basin, Hetian and Lop Nor in Xinjiang several times. Cotton textiles unearthed in the ruins of Niya in 1959 showed that cotton cloth had been very common in that area in the later part of the Eastern Han Dynasty. *Juan* I of Zhao Rushi’s *Record of Foreign Countries* in the Song period several centuries later recorded that products of Namburi (Ma’bar in South India) included foreign cloth in different colours and douluo cotton. Products of the Chola kingdom were said to include coloured silk cloth and Ceiba cloth. The *Record of Eminent Monks in the Southern Seas* compiled by Chen Dazhen et al., in the Yuan period noted that varieties of cloth made in present-day South Asia included white foreign cloth, flower foreign cloth, bi cloth, sheared flannelette and sheared coarse cloth etc. Tribute offered by different Indian states to the Chinese emperor in the Yuan Dynasty included such cloth.
v1.c5.s2.t8.3.2
Wang Dayuan's *A Brief History of Island Countries* from the Yuan period recorded that Banavasi in India (southeast of Karwar, in Karnataka) made fine cotton cloth. Textiles made in Bengal included bi cloth, gaoni cloth, douluo cotton etc. Other areas including Bhandari are recorded as making textiles such as "douluo" cotton, "badan" cloth, big hand towels, cotton cloth, big flower towels, silk cloth, "pisang" cloth, fine cloth, cotton piece goods etc. *The Travels of Marco Polo* recorded that Indian Malabar (the south-western coast of India) made black pepper, ginger, cinnamon bark and cotton cloth, and Chinese merchants went to India by ship and brought fabrics, precious metals and traditional medical materials with them, taking back local specialties. *Juan* 5 in Mao Ruizheng’s *Record of the Interpreters of the August Ming* wrote that tribute offered by Kulam (Kollam in present-day Kerala) in the fifth year of Yongle (1407) included a pearl umbrella, white cotton cloth and black pepper. Again, it was mentioned that tribute offered by western countries included a black and yellow tiger and a douluo cotton quilt in the 21ˢᵗ year of Yongle (1423). Ma Huan’s *Overall Survey of the Oceans Shores’* in the Ming Dynasty recorded that Bengal produced five or six types of fine cloth, including bi cloth and turmeric cloth. During the reign of Zhengtong of the Ming Dynasty, Bengal offered white bi cloth and douluo cotton as tribute.
v1.c5.s2.t8.3.3
*Juan* 326 of the *History of the Ming Dynasty* mentions that tribute from Kulam included white cotton cloth, while tribute from Calicut included danbolan cloth and bi cloth. After the late Ming and the early Qing periods, the trade between India and China was increasingly controlled by the West, as India came under British colonial domination. From the 1780s, raw cotton from western India was increasingly exported to China, to pay for the rapidly escalating imports of Chinese tea by the British. The export of raw cotton played an important role in the growth and early development of the port of Bombay (now Mumbai), and in the development of the shipbuilding industry in this region. Later in the 19th century CE, with the growth of the modern Indian textile industry, cotton yarn began to be exported from India to China. At the end of the 19th century CE, Indian yarn dominated the import market for cotton yarn in China. By the second decade of the 20th century CE, the Chinese manufactured cotton yarn industry developed and the import of cotton yarn from India was greatly reduced. However, in this period, trade in raw cotton and cotton yarn, as well as in varieties of piece goods including unbleached cloth, coarse cloth, fine cloth, foreign standard cloth and twill cloth, etc. continued. It can be said that cotton and cotton cloth were historically India’s main exports to China and made an important contribution to India-China economic exchange.