STATE OF HANDLOOM WEAVERS, WEAVING AND FABRIC IN TAMILNADU THROUGH THE AGES

‘Weaving’ according to historians, is the second product that mankind has learnt in the process of progressive civilization. Since remote antiquity, handloom weaving remains a traditional occupation of India. Belonging to artisan class, weavers always possess a sense of pride in the cultural life of the country. They manufacture fabrics of excellent and splendid quality which have gained global reputation over five thousand eight hundred years. These handlooms are unparalleled in its flexibility and versatility, permitting experimentation and encouraging innovation. Innovative weavers with their skillful blending of myths, faiths, symbols and imagery provide the fabric an appealing dynamism.1 The quality of cotton fabrics manufactured by our weavers gets approbation from the historians. Herodotus applauses that the Indian possess likewise a kind of plant which, instead of fruit, produces wool of a fine and better quality than that of sheep. On this the Indians make cloths.2 Further, traveler Tonnat who wondered about varieties of clothes made with simple tools says, “in the manufacture of fine muslin in which they excel all over the world, the wheel, the reel and the loom are of a simple and artless structure. Yet the work cannot be equaled with the European machinery aided by every effort of ingenuity and skills.”3 Abbe J.A. Dubois, who was greatly impressed by the skill and craftsmanship of weavers writes, “the beautiful fabrics are manufactured in wretched thatched huts built of mud, 20 to 30 feet long by 7 to 8 feet broad. In such a room, the weavers stretch his frame, squats on the ground and quality piles his shuttles surrounded by his family, his cows and his fouls.”4 A Dutch chaplain who was in Madraspatnam in 1649 said that the people’s chief traffic consists of coloured stuff and the weavers here being famous throughout the Indies as well as their dyes.5 Abul Fazl says that the Emperor manufactured such excellent silken goods with the assistance of foreign experts employed by him that they could successfully compete with foreign imports.6 Hemingway in his Gazetteer of Tanjore District records that the silk and cotton clothes of Tiruvappur have a considerable reputation and that the scarlet vegetable dyes used there is especially well known.