I.DKST \si.\TIC COTTONS 



G08SYPIUM 



History 







!. I. ut, it is (iiU.-n for granted rather than expounded or 



justified. All this might of course argue antiquity, an it certainly does for the 

 arts of spinning ami weaving, but the word kdrpdti muy huve existed for 

 ..ni 'in.- with a generic rather than a specific signification. 



Mmil.ii-h it M extremely ilitlir ult, if not impossible, to determine the earliest 

 n n-forences to cotton in the Persian, Arabic and European clawics. It is 



r tliiit kutn, katdn or hutun (the Arabic name from which we have OUM!O NUMB. 

 I th KiiL;lisli word cotton) originally denoted flax, not cotton. So also in 

 kur/HiAOH, often rendered cotton, had, as already stated, the still enrln-r 

 i.i\ nr simply of a fine textile. But cotton textiles had been carried 

 t Kurope, and were regularly traded in, long before any definite knowledge 

 1 tlixro regarding the fibre of which they were made. In fact the Greets 

 .iriii-il definitely of the cotton plant through the group of explorers who 

 i>d India along with Alexander the Great and his immediate successors in drw-k 

 Baotriana. Herodotus (450 B.C.) had written of India having wild trees that I>faooTrie. 

 I "\ir fleeces as their fruits. But right down to the middle of the 18th century 

 tln> wool-bearing trees were divided into those with spinose and those with 

 Miiooth stems. The former were the silk-cotton trees, of which itnmimj- 

 ,n,,ii,,i , i, ,,,,, may be given as the type, while under the latter many of the 

 botanical writers included kapok (Ki-itHii-miruH iinfrin-tmntuni). 



A large percentage of the earliest authors speak of cotton being used for 

 piilts mid mattresses, but are silent regarding its being spun and woven. Ktesias Quilting-cottoiis. 

 \viuild appear to have been the first European who observed the spinning and 

 \ica\ ing of the Natives of India, but his description does not necessarily denote 

 cotton as the fibre. Theophrastus (350 B.C.) gives us the first definite conception Vmt 

 of I ndian cotton cultivation. He says (Hist. PI. (ed. Schneider), iv., ch. 4, 132), Description. 

 " The trees, from which the Indians make cloths, have a leaf like that of the 

 mulberry ; but the whole plant resembles the dog-rose. They set them in the 

 plains arranged in rows, so as to look like vines at a distance." He then adds 

 that cotton cultivation may be seen both in India and Arabia. Indian cotton- 

 bearing plants set in rows necessarily involves cultivation, but it would be equally 

 applicable to the perennial as to the annual plant. The comparison to the dog- 

 rose, with its open lax branches, however, brings to mind the perennial roji of 

 Gujarat rather than the small compact bush of the ordinary annual cotton. 

 (See below, under Roji, p. 581.) 



Pliny tells us that cotton (carbasa) was in Tylos called Gossympines. He 

 does not state whence he derived that information, but curiously enough by 

 modern botanical writers that word has become the generic name for the cottons 

 (*.sv//''")- In the Periplus of the Erythrcean Sea (63 A.D.) we have the first 

 commercial mention of Indian cottons. The raw cotton, as also the Indian 

 <-ot ton manufactures, were conveyed by the Arabs from " Patiala, Ariake and 

 Barygaza " (the modern Broach) up the Red Sea to " Aduli." The Indika of 

 Arrian, a work compiled (150 A.D.) from Nearchus, Megasthenes, Strabo and 

 Eratosthenes, as also other early Greek travellers, was professedly intended to 

 supersede the inaccurate account of India given by Ktesias. After narrating 

 the particulars above mentioned, Arrian adds that the cotton of India is whiter 

 and brighter than that of any other country. Thus by the beginning of the 

 Christian era we have a fairly vivid glimpse of India as a cotton-growing and 

 cotton-manufacturing country. Stein (Ancient Khotan, 1907, 374, 412, 430, 442, 

 etc.) mentions that cotton cultivation is very largely pursued around the modern 

 Khotan, and in other passages he refers to fragments of cotton garments, etc., 

 found in the ruins of the ancient city, which must be accepted as dating from Oldest Actual 

 the 3rd to the 8th century. These are doubtless the oldest authenticated examples Samples, 

 of the Central Asiatic cotton industry at present known. 



The simple reference to a fibre or textile, under such names as kdrpdai, katdn, 

 linon, carbamu or Oosaypion may be of no historic value whatever. It has to 

 be shown that the word used had the same signification then as to-day. Many 

 illustrations might, in fact, be given of the confusion that prevailed regarding the 

 separate recognition of the chief textiles of the world, down even to the 17th 

 century. In Manchester, for example, a particular texture of goods, woven of 

 wool, was in 1590 sold under the name of " Manchester Cottons." In 1664 the 

 dispute between Sir Martin Noel and the East India Company as to whether 

 " Calico was linen or no " became acute, and that controversy shows how very 

 reluctantly the name " cotton " was in England accepted as indicative of a dis- 

 tinct fibre. 



571 



The First 

 Definite 

 Account of 

 Indian Cotton 

 Trade. 



