A writer’s fond memories of her mother’s silk sarees culminates into a new book on the history of silk, and India’s rightful place in it
From cocoons in London’s museums to unnamed women lost in time, Aarathi Prasad traces the strands of silk through the ages. Seen here is a farmer preparing Muga silkworms to be released on Som trees, which yields Assam’s unique golden yellow silk. Pic/Getty Images
I found it remarkable that such an ancient traditional material could have such a surprising, technological future,” Aarathi Prasad tells mid-day. The London-based writer, broadcaster and researcher says that she understood that the history of silk was a more global, and nuanced story than most realise. “And that the domesticated silk moth was by no means the only animal whose silk people wove into fabrics.” Prasad’s new book, Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses (HarperCollins India) is a cultural and biological account spanning continents and millenia, combining global and natural histories of silk production with more human records of scientists and explorers, as well as a study that goes beyond the Chinese silkworm Bombyx mori to trace stories of ‘other’ silks from other moths such as muga and tasar from India as well as sea silk from mollusks and spider silk. As she explains in her Introduction, “…there is not just one silk, there is not just one story of silk.”
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Placing silkworms in the spinning trays and removing the cocoons; Drying cocoons in the sun; Unwinding the cocoons; Testing, sorting and packing silk
Prasad, the daughter of an Indian mother who wore only silk sarees and a Caribbean father who loved the natural world, says that she became fascinated with the fabric when she was 10. “It was in Karnataka; I was taking a walk through a village and saw a house with a hand-run loom, and a family weaving silk fabric on it, with a beautiful gold zari border. My mother only wore natural fabrics and loved silk sarees, so they were always around me. But I was still struck by the particular beauty [of what they were weaving], and feel. Some years later, on a trip to Assam, I bought a tasar silk shawl that I treasured. I didn’t believe it was silk at first, just because I had never seen anything like it. Tasar is more textured than conventional silk, so I thought it was hand loomed cotton at first. I was surprised at how sturdy, and yet soft it was. Even without being dyed it had a beautiful warm copper colour.” It was however, much later when she became interested in regenerative medicine that Prasad learned about the applications of silk in medicine and technology, “for regenerating damaged tissues in the body, for example, for sensors, even holograms.” It was at this time that she also began raising silkworms at home to see their metamorphosis up close.
The tasar silkworm by botanist William Roxburgh, 1802; (right) processing silk cocoons in Bengal, 1895. Pics Courtesy/Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses
Prasad’s archival research for the book, which she says took exactly a year to write, took her to institutions like the Natural History Museum in London where along with silk cocoons from Assam and other parts of India brought to London and Paris by the British in the 19th century to show in their colonial exhibitions, she found samples of fabrics made out of those cocoons. “It opened up a whole narrative of the European exploitation of the natural resources of Asia and other continents for their own economic benefit, through this one fabric. Silk was big business, and because of its great diversity, India was the country they looked to,” Prasad observes.
Aarathi Prasad
There are a variety of silks from many different moths that have historically been used across Asia. The ancestor of the Chinese silk moth—which was selectively bred or domesticated to produce fine threads—also inhabited a region that extended to the foothills of the Himalayas, across Northern India, Assam and Bengal. At the same time, the silk of other non-domesticated moths was also used, found in Indus Valley Civilisation sites. “There is a long history, and different weaving and looming techniques that developed, with diverse silks up for use for a variety of clothing and other purposes, for example in jewellery-making,” she says.
Following from a Dedication to “women silenced through fates not of their own choosing,” Prasad also relates how during her research, she tried to track the work of some women, and found it nearly impossible. “In the history of science, European ‘discoveries’ are well recorded, and there is so much information to find if you look hard enough—at least the studies made by men.” Women were not allowed to publish in scientific journals. “I could feel the frustration of these brilliant women who were excluded, just because of their gender, even though their studies were often taken and used.” She also mentions the absence of the perspectives of indigenous experts from India, the Americas and South-east Asia who shared their intimate knowledge of the natural world. “They are alluded to in some records I could find, but remain faceless and mostly nameless.”
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