Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages.

CENTRAL ASIAN TEXTILES AND THEIR CONTEXTS IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES edited by Regula Schorta. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 2006. 316 pages with 240 illustrations (mostly in colour).

This is the ninth volume in the series Riggisberger Berichte devoted to scholarly studies of ancient textiles, the principal interest of Abegg-Stifrung in Riggisberg, Switzerland. It complements volume 6 published in 1997 cataloguing a remarkable group of silk textiles from the Silk Road acquired by the Foundation a few years earlier. Eighteen scholars from various disciplines gathered in 1999 to discuss the importance of the acquisition and the present volume is the printed record of the papers presented. While the editor apologizes for the delay in their appearance, for all interested in the Silk Road the final product will be worth the wait.

Two points, however, need to be emphasized at the start. The choice of the expression "Middle Ages" in the title without an explanation in the Foreword of exactly what time span it signifies is unfortunate. Secondly, for readers who did not see the 1997 exhibition or its catalogue, a brief description of the acquisition and a definition of the context would have been helpful. In point of fact, only a few of the pieces from the Foundation's collections are discussed or illustrated in the volume, which makes it imperative for non-specialist readers to peruse the catalogue to understand the relevance of these "contextual" essays.

Nevertheless, they do stand on their own to provide us with a lively discourse on the bustling exchange of material goods and ideas along the Silk Road. The period covered by the essays is roughly from 223 CE, the beginning of the Sassanian period in Persia, to the end of the Tang dynasty in the 10th century in China. What these essays emphasize though is not the East-West movement of Chinese silks, the conventional wisdom of Silk Road trade, but the West to East journey of Sassanian luxury silks or Sassanian influenced silks produced elsewhere in Central Asia. The narrative begins with a lucidly written essay by A.D.H. Bivar on how Sassanian textiles reflect royal symbols and ideology and ends with a substantial review of the contents of Tibetan tombs in Dulan county, Qinghai by Xu Xinguo. Other recently discovered Central Asian textiles in Tibet, such as the 7th-8th century samit from the Foundation's cache (fig. 121 of the volume), are discussed in a second article by Amy Heller.

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In between the Bivar and the Xu Xinguo articles, there is a fascinating group of essays that not only provide art-historical insights by offering cogent comparisons with other forms of art such as murals and sculptures, but also technical studies. The latter include discussions of dyestuffs along the Silk Road, technology of the textiles of Astana, and weaving methods for Western-style samits in northwest China. Three articles are devoted to the so-called "Zandaniji" silks and two to the remarkable finds of the Tang-period palace and Buddhist temple at Famen Si in Fufeng county in China. One article also discusses some of the Central Asian silks preserved in the Horyu-ji temple in Japan.

Most unfortunate is the fact that the only article devoted to the Indian subcontinent written by Marianne Yaldiz is in German with an English summary that really does not provide an idea of the essay's essence. It is difficult to understand why, when so much delay in publication was caused by translating Chinese contributions to English, this article was not translated, knowing that to most Indian readers German is as Greek as Chinese. Basically, her article deals with the "Recaption [representation?] of textile motifs in Indian art [Gandhara to Ajanta] and their influence on the paintings of Xinjiang", to use the title of the English summary.

Such minor shortcomings in no way diminish the enormous importance of this well produced and generously illustrated volume (complete with all the scholarly apparati) that should be read not only by those interested in trade and textiles along the Silk Road but by all cultural historians of Asia. Textiles were not simply commodities of commerce but they also fostered communication and exchange of ideas among peoples of different cultures, ethnicity, and languages.

On a provocative note Richard N. Frye at the end of his article "Bukhara and Zandaniji" writes (p. 80):

   A final note is a letter from Professor
   Glassie of the Folklore Institute of
   Indiana University, in which he
   mentions that finely woven cotton
   and silk muslins or brocades are found
   in Bangladesh today: they are called
   jamdani or jandani and imitations
   of this cloth are made in Erzerum,
   Turkey. Is this an echo of the ancient
   Zandaniji?

Firstly, not all "finely woven cotton and silk muslins or brocades" of Bangladesh are called jamdani (and not jandani, as far as I know). Secondly, leaving aside the superficial phonetic resemblance, and though not a linguist, I believe the Bengali word jamdani is surely related to the Kashmiri jamawar (derived from Farsi jamahwar) which denoted embroidered shawls. Only embroidered cotton or muslin (derived from Mosul in Iraq) is called jamdani. It is unlikely therefore that the jamdani of Bangladesh has anything to do with Zandan or Zandaniji, but the suggestion is intriguing.