Petals in the Air
Jamdani and the winds of change
Guest edited by MAP ACADEMY
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Jamdani is a patterned, hand-woven muslin textile from the Bengal region known for its extraordinary fineness and floral or geometric motifs woven using the extra-weft technique. Historically associated with the region of present-day Dhaka in Bangladesh, and often called Dhaka muslin, jamdani dates back to at least the fourth century BCE in the Indian subcontinent in an early form. Its production flourished under Tughlaq and Mughal patronage between the 14th and 18th centuries. Alongside plain Dhaka muslin, jamdani became an extremely valuable trade commodity from at least the 17th century, and its popularity in Europe during British colonial rule led to the proliferation of machine-made imitations there. These, combined with harsh British policies prohibiting the domestic production of cloth in colonial India and later the movement of artisans across newly drawn political borders, caused a decline in traditional jamdani weaving. Revived in the late 20th century, traditionally woven and machine-made jamdani is most popularly used for saris in contemporary Bengal.
One of the earliest references to a jamdani-like textile appears in 300 BCE in the writings of Megasthenes, an Ancient Greek historian and diplomat in Chandragupta Maurya’s (r. 321-297 BCE) court, who mentions Indians wearing “flowered garments of the finest muslin.” Muslin from the Bengal region is also mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit treatise Arthashastra, written by Chanakya in the third century BCE, and the first-century CE Greco-Roman manuscript Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which refers to a “Gangetic cotton.”
The decorative geometric motifs such as floral sprays that are characteristic of the jamdani today are believed to have been the influence of Persian artisans who arrived at the Delhi Sultanate during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq (r. 1324-51). The name jamdani is also considered of Persian origin. However, its etymology is speculative, alluding to its floral characteristic as a “flower vase” or its intoxicating quality as a “wine receptacle”. The craft flourished to its peak under the patronage of Mughal rulers in the 17th century. Forbidden by religion from wearing silk, Mughal emperors saw Dhaka muslin as an equally luxurious alternative and patronised the production of extremely fine and intricately patterned jamdani. Under the Mughals, the Dhaka looms produced jamdani textiles woven at thread counts as high as 800 to 1200, indicating the number of threads in a square inch of the fabric; jamdani weaves of today generally have a thread count no higher than 100. Some striking visual records of the jamdani’s imperial popularity appear in the portraits of emperors such as Jahangir (r. 1605-27), who is often depicted wearing floral jamdani patkas (a long, embroidered sash worn around the waist that was an essential part of Mughal male attire).
Historically, the fibres of a particular variant of tree cotton (Gossypium arboreum) known as phuti karpas (G. arboreum var. neglecta) have been used to make the muslin for jamdani weaves. Now extinct, the plant is said to have grown only along the banks of the Meghna River in and around Dhaka, and its fibres were incredibly delicate and short, rendering it unsuitable for spinning into ordinary cotton yarn. The raw cotton was cleaned using a fine comb fashioned from the jawbone of a local fish and processed in a number of steps devised specifically to spin this variety of cotton.
These fibres had the peculiar property of shrinking rather than expanding on absorbing moisture – making them stronger and thereby making it possible to spin into yarn when wet. So the yarn was spun in humid conditions during the early mornings and evenings, and the spinners worked surrounded by bowls of water on the riverside or boats moored on the river. Girls and young women were considered best suited for the task because of their nimble fingers and sharp vision, as the fibres were too fine to be worked by older people. From the yarn spun in these specialised conditions, weavers of the region were able to create a fabric of such unusual lightness that it earned epithets such as baft hawa – Persian and Urdu for “woven air” – and led to myths that it was the creation of mermaids or fairies on the Meghna River.
Whilst the muslin yarn for jamdani was traditionally spun by Hindus, some of whom wove plain muslin, jamdani weaving has been mainly done by Muslims of the Julaha weaving community, who are also known as jamdani tantis, or weavers (from the Odia for loom – tanta). Each part of the intricate spinning and weaving process was the specialisation of a different local community or group. At various points in subsequent centuries, the tradition travelled to other parts of India through the movement of artisans.
While phuti karpas cotton is no longer cultivated, jamdani weavers continue to use traditional techniques with regular cotton yarn. To make the yarn strong enough to be stretched and woven on the loom, it is first washed and then sized with rice starch, which typically uses a gruel of the kalama variety of rice. The wet yarn is wound onto the natai, a cylindrical bamboo frame, and allowed to dry. The warp thread is stretched onto a pit loom with a perforated bamboo reed frame; the weft thread is drawn through this frame.
The loom is operated by two weavers – generally a master weaver and an apprentice – seated side by side. A sheet of paper with the patterns and motifs sketched out is often held under the warp for reference. While the ground weft is passed back and forth using a shuttle, or maku, the motifs and patterns are simultaneously created by using extra weft, or supplementary weft, thread from its spool according to the predefined pattern. Each motif is rendered by hand using a special pointed tool made of ox horn, called kandul or kandi, or bamboo sticks sharpened into needles to interlace the extra weft thread through selected parts of the warp in a slow, meticulous process. This is done row by row, alternating with the regular weft thread, with an extremely high number of repetitions required to achieve even a moderately high thread count. The yarn used for the extra weft of the motifs is typically thicker than that of the rest of the fabric. Sometimes, a Jacquard loom partly automates the process, though it cannot achieve the intricacy and quality of the finest jamdani.
While the supplementary weft technique is also used in brocade, leading to jamdani sometimes being classified as a form of cotton brocade, these supplementary-weft motifs in jamdani are not standardised using prearranged heddles as in a Jacquard loom but individually introduced into the warp by hand. Weavers have passed down counting techniques through generations using mnemonic devices or illustrations to achieve various motifs and patterns in this way.
Until the 18th century, jamdani weaves were typically made in white or light colours and used for various garments. In contrast, modern jamdani weaves are available in a wide range of colours and yarns and are typically used for saris. White jamdani saris generally comprise an unbleached cotton ground with designs rendered in bleached white cotton; others may feature white designs on pastel-coloured ground or colourful designs on dark ground. More festive jamdanis are also made from coloured grounds embellished with zari (gold and silver thread embroidery) work brocaded with cotton design threads or solely with zari work.
Basic jamdani patterns can be divided into three types – butidar, or floral designs; linear diagonals, or terchi; and a network of patterns across the entire ground of the cloth, referred to as jhalar, or jala. Developed alongside other Persianate arts in the Mughal Empire, some common jamdani motifs are derived from fruits, flora, fauna, and sweets and include pati (petal), bagher paa (tiger’s paw), chameli (jasmine), shandesh (sweets), ashrafi (gold coin), kainchi (scissors), panna hajar (thousand emeralds), kalka (paisley), tesra (diagonal patterns), duria (polka dots), and charkona (rectangular motifs). These motifs may adorn the border of the sari or cover the central field in various patterns. Sometimes, the pallu of the sari is also decorated with elaborate motifs such as angurlata or grapevine.
Patronised by imperial courts and traded internationally, the jamdani textile was coveted for its fineness and intricacy until the 18th century, when the flourishing muslin industry in Dhaka declined. With the Industrial Revolution (c. 1760-1840) in Britain, cheap mill cotton was imported and sold in the Indian market. Dhaka was replaced with Egypt and America for the colonial administration’s raw cotton needs; Bengali weavers found the imported machine-made yarn too thick and unsuitable. Even as they continued to produce coarser jamdani from these threads in less intricate patterns, patronage for high-quality jamdani declined as feudalism weakened in colonial Bengal. Muslin cotton cultivation and jamdani weaving in Dhaka ended with the British enforcing brutal bans on local cloth production.
In the early 20th century, the production of indigenous khadi cotton received impetus from the Indian Swadeshi movement, which called for a boycott of imported British goods and strengthened the domestic production of textiles. But while coarse khadi became a symbol of India’s self-sufficiency, locally produced muslin received no such attention. In the aftermath of Partition in 1947, the cultivation of muslin cotton and jamdani production suffered another setback as Muslim weavers and Hindu yarn spinners moved across newly created borders between West Bengal, India, and East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). In newly independent India, even as elected governments championed khadi for several decades, the historic centre of the jamdani – East Pakistan, later Bangladesh – continued to suffer from the after-effects of colonialism.
Partition led to regional variations of jamdani, such as the Tangail jamdani, which was made in the district of Nadia in West Bengal by weavers who had migrated from Tangail in Bangladesh. Tangail jamdani saris are distinguished from other jamdanis by their special finishing techniques and border designs. Outside the important weaving centres in Bengal, jamdani has also been produced in Tanda in Uttar Pradesh, home to a delicate white-on-white style of jamdani patterning that resembles chikankari (also white-on-white) embroidery. The industry in Tanda was established under the patronage of Wajid Ali Shah (r. 1847-56), the nawab of the Awadh kingdom, in present-day Faizabad and Lucknow. Previously, the 17th century also saw the development of Uppada jamdani saris in present-day Andhra Pradesh, which were woven exclusively for the royal families of Pithapuram, Bobilli, and Venkatagiri. Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh also has a cotton-on-silk jamdani tradition known as Banarasi jamdani.
The techniques associated with Uppada jamdani were revived by the Weavers Service Centre, Vijayawada, in 1985. After liberalising the Indian economy in the early 1990s, the government encouraged muslin production to earn foreign revenue by exporting luxury items such as jamdani. Around this time, the muslin-weaving industry was revived in Kalna, West Bengal, where weavers from around Dhaka had settled following the Partition, and in Nabadwip in the Nadia district of West Bengal. Simultaneously, mass-produced but less fine jamdani became the preferred sari textile amongst Bengali women. These innovations and its growing popularity as a fine sari material established the jamdani as a commercially viable textile industry in the region.
The districts of Sonargaon and Rupshi in Bangladesh and Nadia and Purba Bardhaman in West Bengal are known for their jamdani industries today. In Kalna, Purba Bardhman, master weaver Jyotish Debnath and his son Rajib specialise in weaving fine muslin jamdani using only hand-spun cotton and historical techniques. Master weaver Biren Basak from the village of Phulia in the district of Nadia specialises in weaving narrative scenes using the jamdani technique. Weaver Kalicharan Sharma revived the spinning of fine yarn from Murshidabad. Rabindranath Saha, a 13th-generation master weaver, invented a machine to spin the super-fine thread required for the 500-count jamdani. He won the Sant Kabir National Award in 2004.
Jamdani weaving typically uses only cotton yarn, but contemporary variations have incorporated other materials such as nylon, silk, and cotton-silk blends. In 2009, the Uppada jamdani saris received a Geographical Indication (GI) tag from the Indian government. In 2013, UNESCO added the jamdani tradition of Dhaka to its list of intangible cultural heritage. In 2014, the Dhaka-based Bengal Muslin project led by Saiful Islam was founded to research, revive, and support Dhaka muslin textile traditions, including jamdani weaving. Bangladesh recognised the jamdani as a locally produced fabric with the first-ever GI tag for the country in 2016. In the United Kingdom, the non-profit Muslin Trust’s Jamdani Project supports jamdani production in Bangladesh by commissioning weavers and funding the training of young weavers in the jamdani technique.
Today, a luxury item, samples of traditionally made jamdani textiles are housed in museums across the world, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA; National Museums Liverpool, UK; the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
This article is written by the MAP Academy, an open-access online resource focused on South Asian art and cultural histories:
www.mapacademy.io