ABSTRACT
Known by its ubiquitous and traditional running stitches, a kantha was created through heavy embroidery, and this connects the kantha tradition to the larger landscape of the SAARC region and across the regions of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. With close study of the cloth and traditional bulath bags (cloth bags or pouches used to carry betel leaves and also sometimes the accompanying betel nuts, chunam paste etc.) from Sri Lanka at the Colombo National Museum in Colombo, one can notice a close connection of some of the prominent stitching patterns or embroideries from the larger part of the Indian subcontinent, including kantha stitch, available in both long and short versions across a variety of sizes of bulath bags in Sri Lanka, dating mostly between the 17th and early 19th centuries from the region of Kandy.
