History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c23.s6.11

v1.c23.s6.11

10. A degree of confusion has emerged resulting from a common terminology, *pat/paṭṭa/puṭṭa* for silk as well as jute, Singh, B.N., has demonstrated that *paṭṭa* can be taken as a reference to a cloth woven from a variety of bast fibres. Initially it was dervived from plants of the Malvaceae, shifting later to the *Hibiscus cannibinus* grouping. However, after the 4th century A.D. the term *paṭṭa* was also imbued with the connotation of silk (Gulati p.3). It is possible that the Bengali term *pāṭ* for jute was coined because of the glossy appearance of the fibre.