Indigo and Its Impact on East Asian Textile Prof. Padmini TolatBalaram Visva-Bharati, Saniniketan, India.
[email protected] When one thinks of a blue dye, one usually thinks of the Indian indigo, as Indians had mastered the art of dyeing blue using indigo in 3rd millennium BCE when most of the developed countries of today only could use it to dye black as late as in 13th century CE. When Marco Polo visited India, he was surprised to see blue colour achieved by indigo at Colium in State of Travancore. He said “They (Indians) also have abundance of a very fine indigo (ynde).” (cited Tolat, Vol. I 1980: 29) 1. Natural Indigo Plants and the Dye In India, the natural indigo of commerce was extracted from the leaves of species of plants belonging to genus Indigofera. In India about 40 species of Indigofera genus are found, out of which four were commercially exploited for bulk production due to their higher dye content and their suitability to the climates and soil of the place of cultivation. These were Indigoferaarrecta, Indigoferasuffruticosa (I. anil), IndigoferaSumatrana and Indigoferatinctorial (Tolat, 1980, p. 50). From the leaves of these plants, the indigo dye was extracted by steeping the plants in water, beating the liquid obtained after steeping, collecting the settled dye from the vat, and then draining it to make the paste, boiling the paste and compressing it into the cakes and finally drying them to sell in the markets. These indigo dye cakes, which are very light in weight, were transported to various centres in India as well were exported.