Pashmina is a derivative of ‘Pashmeh’, that is, made from ‘pashm’, the Persian term for wool, obviously, in its original context ‘Pashmina’ meant ‘woolen’, not a class or the finest of wool but any. Himalayan herders had long been classifying various wools in accordance to the levels of their softness reserving the softest for kings. Persian his court language, at the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court ‘pashm’ and ‘Pashmeh’ were the routine terms for wool and woolen. Except ‘tus’, the fleece of aborted baby-goat scarcely obtained and hence its use restricted to the Emperor giving it Shah-tus name, other wools, obviously the most soft inner layers of fleece, that reached the Mughal court were called ‘pashm’, and their woven form, ‘pashmeh’ or Pashmina. Thus at the Mughal court Pashmeh denoted fabrics made from the finest and the softest wool, obvious other than Shah-tus. Gradually the term Pashmina rigidified for a class of wool and later, about two or two-and-a-half centuries ago, into a class of specified wool obtained from a particular breed of trans-Himalayan goat, now synonymous of the finest wool the very name breeding a feeling of softness and rare distinction.
An accomplished example of deft or adroit embroidery, an as fine and intricate needle-work as ‘sozni’ executed perhaps with greater diligence and concentration of mind for while ‘sozni’ goes more freely for delicate fine bels and long courses of leaves or flowers in which variations in lengths, sizes … are not normally detected, and hence no fault, any dexterously worked embroidery, as has this shawl, is rendered using bold and uniformly repeated patterns prone to vary, which the eye easily detects but does not as easily accept, and hence, a detect. This shawl has used for covering the entire field, the space within the bordered frame, a single tree motif conceived with a huge variety of forms of leaves, flowers, branches, buds …, not easily repeatable; however in all twenty repeats of the motif a normal eye fails to find a perceptible variation – anything unacceptable to the eye. Formally the entire field has been worked with a single pattern but the wide range of motifs comprising this pattern, each its part but also an independent form with its own visual impact, creates a sense of delightful diverseness, and this is the rare distinction of this shawl and its art.
Inside about eight inches wide plain ends on the longer sides the shawl’s embroidered section begins with a two inches wide band on either side comprising shawl’s decorative pallas. Though a linear course intermittently rising temple-tower like, representing a creeper’s stem, runs across the whole breadth, this decorative band consists mainly of three styles of multi-colour plants’ like looking motifs rising from this base-stem. Variously conceived and artistically designed these motifs consist of leaf and flower forms but they appear to be mutually transforming : leaves having flowers’ colours, and flowers, leaves’ form. Designed with delicately conceived motifs, multi-colour leaves composed like flowers and tiny shoots emerging from stems-like laid lines, their different sections separated from one another, comprise the border framing all four sides. The delicateness of border-design provides a delightful contrast to the heavily conceived motifs of the field.
Apart some tiny delicate creepers comprising few bunches of tiny flowers and leaves and some isolated flower-forms rendered here and there for manipulating the spaces in between any two of the main motifs, twenty repeats of a single but quite large and variously conceived tree-plant cover the entire field. The tree form rises from a slightly curved multi-colour trunk over which rise meandering branches, sub-branches, twigs and stems, some consisting of a single line, and other, of two parallel lines. Though the tree form is bent leftwards, it consists of four major sections on all four sides mutually balancing the space around. Smaller in size the section on the right consists of more parts : multiple branches, sub-branches, various forms of flowers, leaves and buds, than do others. The vertically rising and the earth-wards bent sections comprise flowers’ like arranged multi-colour leaves with flower-forms in their centres and around. The leftwards turned section comprises mainly a bunch of typical leaves whose outline form is leaf-like but the inner space that this outline frame defines has been filled with rows of flowers.
This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient Indian literature. Dr Daljeet is the chief curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the National Museum of India, New Delhi. They have both collaborated on numerous books on Indian art and culture.
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