Silk in Ancient India: A Comprehensive Historical Review

The ancient knowledge of sericulture is partially obscure and definitively not known, however believed to be of accidental nature during Pre-Christian era between 2700 and 2200BC. There are two views on the origin of sericulture in the world, but for sure both India and China were the pioneers in silk production. According to the first view, the earliest authenticated literature of Chou-King of China mentioned that the empress Si-Ling-Chi, (cf. Leizu the wife of emperor of Hoang-Ti) in her very young age of 14 years invented the technique of separation of silk thread from the silk cocoon developed extensively yet naturally in the garden adjacent to the mansion. This has been reflected in the writing of Confucius (551- 479BC). The formal earliest record of silk can be traced back from the necklace obtained from the skull of child neck under burials at the excavation site of Nevasa within Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra (approx. 1500 BC). The necklace was made up of ‘seventeen barrel-shaped copper beads strung with threads’ and these threads according to A.N. Gulati, an eminent archaeologist, was a white silk apparently spun from cocoon on a cotton nep. The Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlements (2295 BC-3000 BC) in South India provides testimony of use of silk and obviously silk sericulture is considered as older than that. A Buddhist monk or missionary is credited with bringing the Chinese techniques of silk-reeling to India during the Gupta period (400 – 600 AD) and similarly the previous traveller might have brought the eggs of Bombyx mori.