Introduction

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, India has been posited as “master dyer to the world,” sending its high-quality textiles to ports around the globe. With analyses of the subcontinent’s role in supplying printed, dyed, and embroidered textiles to many far-flung markets, as well as the networks that enabled this trade, a growing body of scholarship has explored the features that exemplify India’s role in the global textile network of the period. Yet at the same time, textiles from a variety of both foreign and domestic sources were an integral part of social life within India itself. Paintings include, in quite some detail, depictions of garments constructed from cloths made in a variety of weaving and dyeing techniques. Historical chronicles frequently discuss the gifting of textile items, while administrative documents, particularly from the Mughal court, are replete with references to different types of fabrics as well as the locations of their manufacture. All of these demonstrate a keen awareness of the variations in textiles, their materials and grades, as well as the potential of textiles to signify social and political standing.

This is certainly the case for the Deccan region of India between the mid-sixteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, at a time when it was a major source for the kalamkari and other textiles that travelled to Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Americas.