A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s8.1

v1.c19.s8.1

The Indus Valley civilization is the earliest to have spun and woven cottons. The Babylonian and Greek names for cotton, *Sindhu* and *Sindon*, respectively, point to the Indus Valley as the home of cotton. A statuette of a man from Mohenjo-daro shows him wearing textiles (Fig. 63). The first sample of cotton material was a small fragment of cloth found by D.R. Sahni from Mohenjo-daro. It was found clinging to the side of a silver vase, and was dyed red with madder. Its preservation was due to a fortunate accident, viz. the formation of silver salts from the silver of the vase. Turner and Gulati, of the Technological Laboratory of the Indian Central Cotton Committee, who examined the sample, concluded that it was undoubtedly made of cotton fibre, the typical convoluted structure of cotton being plainly visible. Another sample was received from Mohenjo-daro, viz. small pieces of string found attached to some pottery. The string was found to be 24-fold cotton yarn. The fibre-weight, the number of convolutions, the ribbon-width and the fibre-rigidity of the sample were strikingly similar to those of the coarse Indian cottons of the *arboreum*, *herbaceum* and *indicum* types. Turner and Gulati concluded that this early coarse cotton had been produced from a plant closely related to one of Watt’s *arboreum* types.