ABSTRACT
Cotton cloth today is a simple and cheap commodity, which gives little evidence of its great significance in the history of India and in the relations between the Orient and the Occident. While Europeans have long clothed themselves mainly in animal fibers, chiefly in wool, Indians early developed the art of making clothing from this vegetable fiber, and perfecting it to a remarkable degree. At least as early as 445 b.c. cotton was the usual clothing. 1 It is said that the “woven wind” of Dacca was made of counts above 400 and that a sari large enough for a full-grown woman could be drawn through an ordinary finger ring. Together with precious stones, spices and silks, cotton cloth was one of the products which appealed strongly to Europeans after their first main contact with the East in the Crusades. The desire to trade in these commodities set all the nations to searching for a new route to India when the way through the eastern end of the Mediterranean was finally closed. Later, cotton yarn was carried to Europe, to be woven there, and finally the industry was revolutionized by power machinery. Cotton was grown and ginned in America and a great occidental industry came back to crush the parent from which it sprang. One of the principal reasons for England’s assumption and retention of political control over India has been to provide a market for Lancashire cloth; and competition in cotton, the new power industry against the old hand trade, and the efficient English mills against the younger mills of India, has been the focal point for much of the criticism which Indians have aimed at their occidental rulers. For India, cotton manufacture is ancient glory, past and present tribulation, but always hope.
