All Blue is not Indigo. But Indigo is All Blue.
This is my last post for the Old Year. And since the Lunar-Solar New Year is all about cherishing and respecting 'Mother', this last post is in service to the Motherlands, the first mother. The land of birth and first breath.
"All Blue is Not Indigo, but Indigo is all Blue".
Indigofera Tinctoria, true indigo, Indian Indigo. This is the indigo native to the Indian subcontinent & first domesticated there many thousands of years ago. There are at least 750 species of Indigofera around the globe. Of these only a few have been significant in the production of blue dyes throughout human history. And even of these species of indigo almost all of them are native to, were originally domesticated in, the tropical zones of the Indian subcontinent, African continent and Southeast Asia. There is a lot of misinformation about what true indigo actually is. The term 'indigo dyed' has been used to erroneously describe archaeological and historical finds that have been dyed with other botanically obtained blues. Sometimes, even dye obtained by woad has been mistakenly referred to as 'indigo' because woad, like many other blue giving plants, contain indigo precursors in its chemical structure, which allows the seemingly miraculous extraction of the colour blue from this family of plants. Textile historians are starting to revise many 'discoveries', for example in ancient Egypt & even as far afield in more isolated ancient civilizations like the southern and central american cultural spheres, that have been labeled as being 'indigo dyed'. It's possible that some of the most ancient blue dyed samples found in ancient Egypt may have actually been colored using woad, and not by an Indigofera extracted dye.
Most importantly for me, and for the story of indigo, as excavations & findings about the Indus valley Civilization continues to put the dates of our South Asian history back to at least 8,000 years ago, but possibly even further back towards the Neolithic of 10,000 years, it becomes clear that the cultivation of Indigofera Tinctoria, the establishment of a highly refined process & culture around indigo dye extraction, use of indigo in day to day material culture, and the use of it as a trade commodity, were all happening at a large scale in cities like Mohenjo-Daro.
This emerging history is not yet mainstream 'Wikipedia history', so misinformation about the history of indigo is still widespread. While a quick glance at Wikipedia will say that the oldest example of indigo dyeing was found at a site from the Central American civilizations of Peru, there is no evidence for any kind of extensive establishment of indigo technology & indigo culture in these parts of the world. Often these are singular samples found without evidence for any wide scale use of indigo in the general material culture of these ancient civilizations. Certainly not to the scale on which it unfolded on the Indian subcontinent.
Where you do find evidence of very ancient knowledge structures around indigo dyeing is in the Indian ocean cultures of the subcontinent, eastern north-Africa, west-Africa connected to South Asia via the North African corridor, and more recently, Southeast Asia and Japan. This was the original Indigo zone of the ancient world, interconnected by trade, exchange of knowledge, of plant species, customs, techniques and textile motif vocabularies. It is important to note that while blue can be extracted by many plants containing indigo precursors, even from within the true Indigofera family of plants native to the Indian Ocean zone only a few have the capability to produce a sufficient quantity of extraction that can be used to dye fibers and textiles on a significant scale. And all of the varieties of Indigofera that can produce this larger quantity of indigo dye are either native to the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia & Africa, or spread by dispersal to East Asia. The clue is in the fact that the Indigo species of plants thrives in humid, tropical, subtropical climates with long hot dry seasons,while doing poorly in mountainous, wet, cold regions where the summers while being warm may not reach the levels of heat and aridity that this plant seems to prefer. Indigofera seem to do okay in certain temperate belts, but for the most part no significant amounts of indigo can be extracted from plants that do not have the combination of both humidity and long arid spells in the growing year.
Even with the dispersal of Indigofera plant varieties around the world, and the existence of indigo cultures in all the terrains that Indigofera is native to, where India stands out in this story is in the unique continuity of knowledge systems and culture surrounding; a profound understanding of indigo dyeing coming down in an unbroken line from the Indus valley Civilization itself, approximately 8000-10,000 years ago. The dye technologies were passed down in long lineages, the knowledge protected from generation to generation, kept within the same families, often concentrated in specific villages & regions across the subcontinent. In this sense alone India is unmatched in even the ancient world in its indigo culture.
In Greek and Roman times understanding of this extensive, continuous Indigo culture on the Indian subcontinent was well known. better known than it is today due to distortions introduced by colonial historians and the preeminence given to western archaeological processes; i.e. if a western archaeologist didn't find it & declare it in a western University, it wasn't 'history'.
Talking recently to my mother, a textile artist and academic herself, she said that the textile history of our part of the world is one of the most widely misunderstood aspects of a history that has already been distorted by the colonial historical narrative. However, the tragi-comic irony is that the distortions are only in the history books!
The evidence for this continuity of indigo dyeing is to be found not just in archaeological or historical sources, but in the textile cultures of the Indian subcontinent to this day! Albeit in a severely reduced, abused and traumatized form, but after so many thousands of years of history...it still survives.
Of course even with such a long caption this is just a summary of the story I will delve deeper into, exploring further as I bring Indigo home. Through projects planned that will be released slowly and quietly.
My aim is not to set the record straight, because when it comes to human history there's no such thing as a 'straight record'. Rather, my mission is to clarify the record, to remove the inconsistencies, and distortions. To root indigo back in the brown lands surrounded by the blue of the Indian Ocean
Namaskaram,
Daki
