How the Indian patola clothed Southeast Asian kings

via Deccan Herald, 16 April 2023: An article about the Indian patola cloth and its connection to royalty in Island Southeast Asia.

What might not be as well-known to most people, is that the cloth also had ritual and symbolic significance in places as far away as Indonesia and the Malayan archipelago, where it became the preferred fabric for nobility, priests and shamans.

What’s most surprising about this exchange? The fact that the Dutch East India Company had a major role to play in facilitating it.

Patola textiles were not new to Southeast Asia — they possessed considerable economic value as trade goods in Southeast Asia, even before the arrival of colonial enterprises. As early as the thirteenth century, patolas were exported to the Malayan/Indonesian archipelago where they were called chindé and became markers of status. Records from Ming-period China also mention “flowered sarongs” being worn by the King of Eastern Java — a fabric widely believed to be a patola by scholars. Later, restrictions were placed on who could wear them. In the Javanese courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, for instance, only the rulers, nobility and high-ranking officials were allowed to wear patola fabrics, with the sole exception being a bride and groom on their wedding day.

Source: How the Indian patola clothed Southeast Asian kings | Deccan Herald