Not currently on display at the V&A

The Stein Collection

Fragment
300-500 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

These four pieces of hemp string were recovered from the site of Miran on the eastern verge of the Taklamakan desert. At this site material was discovered at a Buddhist shrine abandoned in the 4rd or 5th century AD.

The site is part of an area of Central Asia we now call the Silk Road, a series of overland trade routes that crossed Asia, from China to Europe. The most notable item traded was silk. Camels and horses were used as pack animals and merchants passed the goods from oasis to oasis. The Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas – while silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism entered China from India in this way.
These string fragments were brought back from Central Asia by the explorer and archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943). The Victoria and Albert Museum has around 700 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Stein at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some are silk while others are made from the wool of a variety of different animals.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleThe Stein Collection (named collection)
Materials and techniques
Spun hemp
Brief description
Four pieces of hemp string
Physical description
Four pieces of hemp string, bound together with museum label.
Dimensions
  • Longest piece length: 32cm
  • Longst piece width: 0.3cm
Style
Credit line
Stein Textile Loan Collection. On loan from the Government of India and the Archaeological Survey of India. Copyright: Government of India.
Object history
Attached to fragment is a rectangular tag label showing Stein number and the date '31.1.07' possibly in Stein's handwriting or that of his assistant, Miss F M G Lorimer.
Historical context
Miran lies between Kargilik and kake Lop Nor on the southern Silk Road. Stein excavated an ancient fort and remains of a Buddhist sanctuary there in 1907 and uncovered spectacular Buddhist murals in its temples and stupas. These depicted winged figures with garlands; imagery which he identified with the mythology and style of Persia and Greece. The appearance of the signature "Tita" led Stein to conclude that the paintings were the work of an artist from the eastern Mediterranean. Temple sculpture, including a colossal Buddha head, was rendered in the opulent Gandharan style of northwest India. Stein called this fusion of regional styles Graeco-Buddhist and determined that the site had flourished in the first centuries of the millennium, when trade along the southern Silk Road had thrived. The V&A holds, on loan, from Miran, silk and wool fragments, and a group of lotus flowers made of cotton and silk and fragments of a painted cotton temple hanging.
Association
Summary
These four pieces of hemp string were recovered from the site of Miran on the eastern verge of the Taklamakan desert. At this site material was discovered at a Buddhist shrine abandoned in the 4rd or 5th century AD.

The site is part of an area of Central Asia we now call the Silk Road, a series of overland trade routes that crossed Asia, from China to Europe. The most notable item traded was silk. Camels and horses were used as pack animals and merchants passed the goods from oasis to oasis. The Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas – while silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism entered China from India in this way.
These string fragments were brought back from Central Asia by the explorer and archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943). The Victoria and Albert Museum has around 700 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Stein at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some are silk while others are made from the wool of a variety of different animals.
Bibliographic reference
Stein, Aurel, Serindia: Detailed Report of Exploration in Central Asia and Westernmost China Carried Out and Described Under the Orders of H.M Indian Government , 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), vol. I, p.538.
Other number
M.II.005 - Stein number
Collection
Accession number
LOAN:STEIN.268

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Record createdDecember 12, 2003
Record URL
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