Assam silk

What is Assam silk?

Assam silk is a name for three silks reared and woven in Assam. Muga comes out gold, with a fine glossy texture and great strength. Pat is white or off-white, from worms raised on mulberry leaves. Eri is soft and warm and often becomes shawls and quilts. The industry is centred on Sualkuchi, a weaving town on the Brahmaputra's north bank, where nearly every household keeps a loom. Many weavers are women hired in from other towns. Muga is called the golden fibre, and it is the one silk that is produced nowhere except Assam.

Where does Assam silk come from?

Silk has a long record in Assam. The Kishkindha Kanda of the Ramayana describes a road east that runs through Magadha, Anga and Pundra before reaching a land of cocoon rearers. Kautilya's Arthashastra, written in the 3rd century BC, names a fine cloth called Suvarnakudyaka from Kamrupa, with fibres the colour of butter and as red as the sun, which scholars read as muga. Sericulture is thought to have come with Tibeto-Burman groups from China, and silk moved along a southwestern route through Burma and Assam to the main Silk Road in Turkmenistan. Genetic work identifies two early centres in Assam: the Garo Hills and Dhakuakhana.

How is Assam silk made?

Each silk has its own worm and its own leaf. Muga caterpillars, Antheraea assamensis, are found only in Assam and feed on som and sualu. Pat worms eat mulberry; eri worms eat castor. Cocoons are reeled and the yarn is woven by hand, mostly on household looms. Kautilya noted that spinners worked the yarn damp, and the habit appears to have lasted. Eri is called non-violent silk because the moths are allowed to emerge and only the open, empty cocoons are used. In 2015 a team at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad published the full sequence and protein structure of muga fibroin.

Colours, motifs and borders

Colour separates the three silks. Muga is naturally golden, sometimes described as yellow, and can also be had white, a shade called Mejankari muga. In older times it was dyed red with lac. Pat is brilliant white or off-white. Eri keeps a softer, duller tone. Old descriptions of Suvarnakudyaka call its fibres butter-coloured and red as the sun. The sources name no fixed motifs, border or pallu design for Assam silk; the cloth is judged instead by sheen, evenness and strength.

How Assam silk is worn

Nothing in the sources sets out a drape for Assam silk, so what is known is the cloth itself. Eri goes into shawls and quilts, warm and soft. Pat and muga are woven into fabric for clothing, and the looms of Sualkuchi have also turned out khadi and cotton. In worship, red, yellow and white wild silk was used to dress temple images. Sualkuchi also wove a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi into pat cloth fine enough to show his two broken front teeth.

When Assam silk is worn

Silk has belonged to worship as much as to the market. The Kalika Purana, written between the 10th and 11th centuries, records red, yellow and white wild silk being used to dress the images of deities in ancient Kamrupa. Otherwise Assam silk is working cloth. Sualkuchi's looms supplied cotton, khadi and silk to families and to buyers, and after the Second World War demand pushed weaving from household use into commercial production for sale.

Styles of Assam silk

Sualkuchi weaves mulberry silk alongside muga, and its handlooms also make cotton and khadi. Weaving there stayed within the Tanti community of Tantipara until roughly 1930; afterwards other communities took it up, and since the 1980s migrant weavers have come to dominate the trade. Some looms are domestic, making a few metres for the family, while semi-commercial weavers work independently or under middlemen called Mahajans, who supply yarn and pay by the piece. A 2002 count recorded 13,752 active commercial handlooms in the town.

Care and buying

Muga silk can be washed by hand, and its lustre is said to grow with every wash; a length of it often outlives its owner. The old belief that muga cannot be dyed or bleached because of low porosity is wrong, and it takes dye like any other silk. Pat cloth should be dried in the shade. Muga pieces carry a Geographical Indication logo, and the Central Silk Board is the body that inspects them and certifies that they are genuine.

What Assam silk means

Muga has held Geographical Indication status since 2007, and the Central Silk Board is the authority that inspects pieces, certifies authenticity and licenses the GI logo. Mahatma Gandhi visited Sualkuchi on 9 January 1946 for an exhibition of eri and khadi cloth, where a portrait of him woven in pat silk by Rajen Dek was presented; he remarked that weavers could weave dreams into cloth. In the 1950s Narayan Chandra Das of Sualkuchi made a radio song from the click of the loom.

Questions people ask about Assam silk

Good reading and sources

• Assam silk on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data