I was hugely entertained to see on TV the “Tang Dynasty Welcome” for our PM in China ! Especially in context of the book I am currently reading, Valerie Hansen’s The Silk Road. Coincidentally, the portion I had just finished was on the Tang dynasty . Looking at the elaborate dances, numbers of dancers and their very colourful, voluminous garments set me off on a fun roller coaster ride of thoughts.
Firstly, what struck me was the quantity of fabric each one of those swaying, swishing, twirling dresses require ! The book does inform us that currency in the Tang dynasty consisted of grain, coins and silk cloth so we know that the technology to hand spin and weave the yarn into cloth (silk) was known at the time . (Had the wheel already been invented or was the fiber rolled on the thigh or on an overturned terracotta pot to produce the yarn?) But whether it was being produced in such large quantities as to fashion garments for dancers is an unknown .
At the same time, the author quotes a document that lists goods placed in a grave from an earlier period: “100,109,000 cubits of “climbing-to-heaven silk” “ but we are also told these exaggerated quantities are indicative that not actual goods but ‘facsimile textiles” were placed.
However, were the garments we saw pure handspun handwoven silk or synthetic duplicates !
And then the beautiful colors of the light floating silks. We are informed that the silk fabric was ‘degummed’ to better absorb the dye and ammonium chloride was one of the many ingredients of the dye bath. So the dyeing technology existed already but such brilliant colors as we saw on our TV screens !
A photograph in the book of the “Tang Barbie” gives us an idea of the high-fashion of that era, but the skirt no where as voluminous as worn by the dancers, the colors much more earthy!
As for those dance moves, I wonder how those have stood the test of time. We know for a fact no videography or photography existed at the time. However, we do have a photograph (much more recent !) of a painted stone panel of men, one of whom is dancing, (the ‘swirl dance’) their clothes more form fitted than what they wear to depict the Tang Dynasty these days!.
The book includes other photographs of fascinating textiles discovered in excavations headed by the legendary Aurel Stein. Many are from the Sasanian Empire of Western Iran.
Today i went to Delhi’s national museum for an unrelated exhibition and later drifted into a gallery i have never visited, Coins and Central Asia. What a revelation that right in my home town, in the heart of Delhi, close to home, i should see similar textiles, “wood slips” with the Kharoshti script and read of their provenance, towns and cities on The Silk Road, Niya, Loulan, Turfan…all written about in this very same book.
And finally, the last but not the least, in April, I managed to see before it closed, a show on Aurel Stein’s work, excavations and findings in Central Asia at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts.
All of these, the book, today’s visit to the Museum, the Aurel Stein exhibition were separate happenings but closely and coincidentally linked one to another, and came together because of the Tang Dynasty Welcome !
sunainasuneja 