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Chin textiles with a story
by:
David W Fraser
The Chin peoples (also known as the Kuki, Lai and Zo) live in the remote and rugged hills of western Myanmar, northeastern India and southeastern Bangladesh. They traditionally grew cotton and indigo, harvested bast fibres and lac, and wove textiles from these materials on back strap looms.
The two million Chin people divide into four major groups (Northern Chin; Southern Chin; Ash?; Khumi, Khami and Mro) based on the languages they speak and the textiles they make.
In the past, Chin textiles marked ones status at communal Feasts of Merit, served as important dowry pieces and identified membership in a subgroup. These traditions have changed since the arrival of Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth century. Missionaries discouraged animal sacrifice, which was central to the feasts, and promoted a more 'modest' dress. As a result, Chin people wove fewer heirlooms and were increasingly willing to part with them.
Restrictions by all three countries on travel to the Chin area means that Chin textile culture has been left remarkably intact. It is only in the last decade that large numbers of Chin textiles have appeared in the regional markets of Yangon, Mandalay, Chiang Mai and Bangkok, providing an opportunity for collectors and stimulating research into this complex variety of culturally important and technically sophisticated weavings.
A thoughtful collector collects not just objects, but also their history, use and cultural meaning. Dealers who are familiar with the cultures from which the textiles come can be a help here.
A collector who visits villages and talks directly with weavers will learn even more and see textiles not sold by dealers, while museum collections show historical textiles that may no longer be available on the market. The records of adventurers, colonial officials, missionaries and anthropologists who have visited the Chin since 1800 can also aid the collector-scholar,1 describing objects and events unknown to contemporary informants. The textiles described here have all been collected by Barbara Fraser and the author since 2000 and are included in the exhibition at Haverford College which focuses on textiles that help to elucidate aspects of Chin culture.
On ceremonial occasions in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Northern Chin men of high status wore a broad, seven metre-long loincloth that had a long undecorated white middle section with figured black panels at either end. Among the Marathe southernmost Northern Chin groupsome men wore a narrower loincloth with end panels comprising alternating stripes of twill and weft-faced plain weave (figure 3). Dealers opine that this second style of loincloth is worn by a lower class, but have little information about it. In fact, we found that the oldest known Chin loinclothwhich was acquired in 1855 by what is now the Victoria & Albert Museumis of this second, twill-decorated type. The oldest known black-panelled Northern Chin loincloth was collected in the Chittagong Hills in 1882. 2 It may be that the twill-decorated loincloth is in fact an earlier form.
Young girls from the northern portion of the Northern Chin range wore string skirts until early in the twentieth century. Very few of these utilitarian textileswhich were made with either bast fibre or cottonhave survived. Indeed, the skirt illustrated is the only one we have seen. The body of the skirt consists of two parallel cords from which cotton yarns are hung with lark's head knots. The ties of the skirt are braids.
Several kinds of culturally important textiles among the Northern Chin of India are called puandum, which literally means 'black cloth'. Black in this case refers to the use of a black or dark blue weft, which deepens the colour of a largely warp-faced mantle. The puandum is typical of women's mantles from Tonzang and Tiddim townships in the northernmost part of Chin State in regard to its arrangement of stripes, including a thin white warp stripe, in the middle of each loom width, that is decorated only on one face with supplementary weft patterning. These decorated white warp stripes are found on many high status Northern Chin textiles and are said to be the most difficult of Northern Chin weaving. A woman's mantle of this type from Tiddim township would generally be called tawnok.3 The Kamhau weaver's brother, who sold this mantle to us, assured us that her name for it was puandum. Because the Kamhau live in Tonzang township, even nearer the Indian border than Tiddim, the use of puandum probably reflects the close affinity of the Kamhau to the Chin on the Indian side of the border.
The Northern Chin mantle in figure 1 was a puzzle. A white mantle with a single bold warp-wise red bar flanked in green and with a thin central white band decorated only on one side would be a man's mantle from Tiddim or the Mizo. The addition of a weft-wise black band perpendicular to it would suggest a Mizo origin. But to have four bold red warp-wise bars as this does is distinctly unusual. We learned only several years after its purchase that it had been made by a Zahau woman for her Mizo husband. The Zahau are renowned for their innovative weaving, which may explain this product of a mixed marriage.
The Vaiphei are one of several Northern Chin subgroups widely called Kuki who migrated out of the Chin Hills into what is now Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland in northeastern India. The Kuki continue to have a vibrant weaving culture, as illustrated by the mantle in figure 6. This festival mantle was woven recently using acrylic yarn. Many Vaiphei men now wear tunics as the upper body garment for festivals, but the weaver of this mantle has chosen instead to create what she calls the 'old style of male upper body garment. Moreover, she has made the black and red weft bands in weft twining, a very early textile-making method that has largely been replaced in Northern Chin weaving by weft-faced plain weave. The owner of this blanket had no interest in selling it to us, but was willing to give it to us in a ritual exchange of gifts, as he appreciated our interest in Vaiphei culture.
The Bawm migrated out of the Chin Hills in the eighteenth century and into the Chittagong Hills of present-day Bangladesh. Their wrapped skirts (figure 7) continue to show features of the older skirts from Falam township in Chin State, including end bands worked in weft twining.
Several Northern Chin groups make pile sleeping blanketsvariously called puan sathup, puan pui or puanriof the sort shown in figure 8. They have an important role in Chin marriages: a Mizo or Hmar bride must bring one when she moves into her husbands home, and her bride price is reduced if she does not. If she dies, her family may reclaim the blanket when her widower takes a new wife. These blankets are rarely collected, perhaps because of their weight and the discoloration that comes from heavy use.
The Khumi also make a pile blanket (kane nitang) that is an important dowry item (figure 9). If a weaver cannot provide a kane nitang for her daughter's dowry, she must provide two blankets of a similar sort without pile.4 The Khumi kane nitang is distinctive for the band of supplementary weft patterning at the unfringed end on the pile side and (not shown) at the fringed end on the
non-pile side.
The most prominent textiles of the various Ash? Chin are tunics, which are ankle-length among the southern Ash? groups and waist-length among the northern Ash?, notably the Laytu. The tunic in figure 2 is from a little-known group called the Het Tui, who live along the Lemro River, like the Laytu.5 All we know about the Het Tui we have learned from U Cin Lamh Mang and Daw Khun Shwe, dealer-scholars in Yangon.
The zih bok is an unusual textile for its large size, for the fact that it is folded in half with the free corners tethered together, and for the gaps between the loom widths where the seams remain unsewn near the fold (figure 4). The first dealer who sold us a zih bok claimed it was for a chief in the Northern Chin hills and that the open seams were for the chief's arms. Southern Chin villagers far to the south clarified that the zih bok was a ceremonial blanket for a mithan (Bos frontalis) a type of southeast Asian ox, used in sacrificial feasts. It is draped over the mithan's back, or folded into a small square and placed on the body, before sacrifice. Because of the first dealer's misinformation we returned the original zih bok to him and bought this one, which has better provenance.
We have come to think that good collecting is like liberal education. One needs to link information from different sources, use new tools, look in new places and ask new questions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Barbara G Fraser was co-equal in the collecting and research described here. Maris Gillette collaborated in curating the exhibition of these textiles and in editing the text. Jeff Crespi did the studio photography.
The exhibition of Chin textiles is at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, from 16 February-25 March 2007.
NOTES
1 The most comprehensive anthropological accounts are Claus-Dieter Brauns & Lorenz G L?ffler, Mru: Hill People on the Border of Bangladesh (Basel: Birkhauser Verlag, 1990);
F K Lehman, The Structure of Chin Society: A Tribal People of Burma Adapted to a Non-Western Civilization, Illinois Studies in Anthropology No. 3 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963); and H N C Stevenson, The Economics of the Central Chin Tribes (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1943). One of the best colonial accounts is B S Carey & H N Tuck, The Chin Hills: A History of the People, British Dealings with Them, their Customs and Manners, and a Gazetteer of their Country (Calcutta: Survey of Indian Offices, 2 volumes, 1896). Missionary records are scattered, but include the files of the American Baptist Historical Society and the British Library. Extensive Chin textile collections are found at Denison University, the American Museum of Natural History, the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Henry Art Gallery, The Textile Museum and the Mizoram State Museum.
2 In David W Fraser & Barbara G Fraser, Mantles of Merit: Chin Textiles from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh (Bangkok: River Books, 2005), the Victoria & Albert Museums 5613 (IS) is pictured in figure 189 and the 1882 loincloth with black end panels (Staatliche Museen zu BerlinPreussischer Kulturbesitz Ethnologisches Museum IC 13 277) in
figure 92.
3 For example, see Fraser & Fraser 2005, op. cit., figures 148-150.
4 The Khumi tradition of white sleeping blankets is long-standing as evidenced by the 1872 report of R F St Andrew St John, 'A short account of the hill tribes of North Aracan, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1872: vol. 2, pp. 233-247, ' The blankets made by the Hka-mies are generally white, and have thick ribs of cotton run in to keep them warm; some are like large Turkish towels. |
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Figure 1
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Figure 2
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Figure 3
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Figure 4
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