Bengali Muslin
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About two hundred years ago, Dhaka muslin was considered one of the most expensive garments in the world. Then everyone forgot about it. A new fashion in late eighteenth-century Europe sparked an international scandal. In fact, an entire social class was accused of walking naked in front of people. The whole fault was with the muslin imported from Dhaka. It was the most expensive fabric ever made in Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh. The city was part of Bengal in those days. This muslin was not like today’s. Rather, it was made in 16 stages from a rare plant that grew only on the banks of the river Meghna. This muslin was considered very valuable in its time. It has had global patronage for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, it was used to make goddesses’ garments. It was adorned by kings of distant lands and many generations of the Mughal dynasty. There were many types of it, but the most exquisite type was called ‘baft hua’, meaning woven air, by a court poet. The muslin of Dhaka was said to be as light and soft as air. According to one tourist, it was so thin and soft that a 91-meter-long thong could easily pass through a ring. Another wrote that an 18-meter length could easily fit in a box of matches. The muslin of Dhaka was more than transparent. Traditionally, this expensive fabric was used to make sarees and robes, but in Britain it changed the style of the elite and introduced the fashion of formal and extravagant garments of the Georgian era. Despite this, the muslin of Dhaka remained popular among the well-to-do. Queen Marie Antoinette of France, French Queen Josephine Bonaparte and author Jane Austen were fascinated by the muslin. But the cloth quickly disappeared as it became popular in then-enlightened Europe. In the early twentieth century, the muslin of Dhaka disappeared from the world, and only a few of its remnants are preserved in people's personal collections, or in museums. The intricate craft of making it was forgotten and the cotton, locally known as cracked cotton, suddenly disappeared.[citation needed]
Raw Material
The raw material for Dhaka Muslin, the muslin of Dhaka, is obtained from plants growing on the banks of the River Meghna. It is one of the three rivers that make up the Ganges Delta, the world's largest basin. This plant would start sprouting as soon as spring came here. At puberty, only one yellow flower bloomed twice a year in each plant, with snow-white cotton fibers. These fibers were smaller than ordinary cotton. And low-cost cotton was useless for industrial machines. These fibers were very raw and would break if given the slightest twist to make a thread. That's why the locals used thousands of years old methods to make yarn from it. This process was completed in 16 stages and each stage required special skills. That is why these steps were taken in different villages in Dhaka. It was a real collective effort in which men and women alike took part. At that time, the area was part of Bengal, which is now divided into Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Earlier, cotton balls were cleaned with the small jawbone of a particular fish. After that the thread was spun from it. These tiny fibers needed more moisture in the air to stretch, so these expert women would complete this step in boats in the morning and evening. Older people usually couldn't make thread because they couldn't see the fibers in dim light.
Sonia Ashmore, who wrote a book on muslin in 2012, says: Then came the weaving stage. It took months because the fibers were extracted from the muslin. In this way a silver masterpiece of art came into being.
Asian Wonder
Western consumers in the area were reluctant to believe that Dhaka’s muslin was made by human hands. There were rumors that it was made by a water fairy, ghost or some other demonic creature. Some people say that this whole process is done under water. "It used to be so soft and light that now there is nothing like it," says Ruby Ghaznavi, vice-president of the Bangladesh National Crafts Council. This weaving process is still going on in the region today, but it uses ordinary cotton thread instead of cracked cotton. In 2013, UNESCO[1] added it to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list to preserve this traditional weaving process. But the real success is the large number of threads. The more threads there are, the softer and stronger the fabric will be. Although Dhaka’s muslin has been lost for more than a century, its sarees, robes, two-straps and costumes can still be seen in museums. Sometimes an item made of it appears in a large auction house and sells for thousands of dollars.
The Gift of The Colony
Dhaka muslin was sold all over the world long before European elite women were adorned by it. It was loved by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and was mentioned by an unknown Greek Egyptian merchant about 2,000 years ago in his book Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, (a log book of “sailing around” the Erythraean Sea). The Roman writer Petronius was probably the first to raise his eyebrows at its transparency, saying, "Thy bride might as well clothe herself with a garment of the wind as stand forth publicly naked under her clouds of muslin."
In later times, however, the 14th-century Berber-Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, the 15th-century Chinese traveller Ma Huan, and many others praised the fabric. It rose to prominence during the Mughal Empire. During this period, the muslin trade spread to Iran, Turkey, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. It was much admired by the Mughal emperors and their wives, whose pictures are seldom painted in anything other than muslin. They hired skilled weavers and banned the sale of the finest muslin to anyone else. There is a well-known tradition about the transparency of this muslin that Emperor Aurangzeb rebuked his daughter for appearing naked in public even though she was wearing a nine-layer muslin dress. By 1793, the British India Company had conquered the Mughal Empire, and in less than a century, the entire region was under British rule.
The muslin of Dhaka was first exhibited in 1851 at The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in Britain. The exhibition was the brainchild of Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, with the aim of introducing to British subjects the marvelous products of the British Empire. At The Crystal Palace, where the exhibition was held, about 100,000 items were brought from far and wide around the world. While the people of Victorian London were sacrificing the fabric, the makers were highly indebted and facing financial ruin. The book Goods from the East 1600-1800, states that the East India Company began interfering in the intricate and delicate process of making muslin in the 18th century. First, the East India Company replaced the local customers of the muslin with the British Empire as its buyer. Sonia Ashmore, in her 2012 book, Muslin concurs, explaining, "At first, they took control of the fabrication process and controlled the entire trade ... Then they began to put pressure on the industry to produce more textiles", and reduce its cost. It took a very special skill to make this transparent muslin from cotton. It was an expensive and laborious process. One kilogram of cotton produced only about eight grams of muslin. While textile makers struggled to meet this demand, debts sank even further. In the year that followed, they were paid for as much cloth as they had to make. But if their production was not of the required quality, they would have to return the money. There was also the issue of competition.
Companies like East India were recording in detail every action of every industry on the sub-continent. And so it was in the muslin industry. The details of each process of muslin production were recorded. As European demand for luxury clothing grew, so did the interest in producing it locally. Samuel Oldknow, a textile industrialist in Lancashire, England, began to supply a large number of London textiles to the inhabitants of London, using the latest technology, the spinning wheel, and by 1784 he had about a thousand textiles. Although British muslin was not of the same standard as Dhaka’s original muslin, as it was made from ordinary cotton and had a much lower thread count, the Dhaka industry was destroyed. And along with war and poverty in the region, and following several earthquakes, textile makers began producing low-quality cloth and some became full-fledged farmers. Eventually this whole industry came to an end. According to the human rights activist, Hameeda Hossain, in her book, The Company weavers of Bengal: "It's important to remember that this was a family business," and "We often talk about the weavers, but behind them were the women who were spinning. There were a lot of people in that industry." Over time, Dhaka’s muslin craft disappeared. Once the silken thread was no longer to be made from it, the rare variety of cotton plant from which it was made, Gossypium arboreum var. neglecta, (known in Bengal as Phuti karpas) - cultivated only near the Meghna River - returned to the wild and was lost to agriculture. Now they forgot to turn the wheel.[awkward]
References
- ↑ "Jamdani recognised as intangible cultural heritage by Unesco". the daily star. Retrieved 2013-12-05.
Bengali muslin
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