Strip of two joined plain woven pale brown wool textiles.

Rectangular strip consisting of two different, though similar, textiles joined at the middle by stitching. Both fragments are of plain weave pale brown wool, and one has a more open-weave structure than the other.

Stein Textile Loan Collection. On loan from the Government of India and the Archaeological Survey of India. Copyright: Government of India

Niya includes a group of towns in the southern region of the Taklamakan Desert, at the foot of the Kunlun mountains. Once a military post under the Kingdom of Khotan, Niya became an important oasis along the southern Silk Road. Stein excavated several groups of dwellings there and found hundreds of wedge-shaped wooden tablets, some laced together in pairs with string and affixed with clay seals. The appearance of Pallas Athena, Eros and other Greek deities on some seals showed the impact of western classical art on Khotan. The tablets were inscribed with Kharoshthi, an ancient script of northwest India. Stein identified some as Buddhist prayers and others as administrative documents and he dated them to the period of the Kushan empire, which thrived in the first three centuries AD. Among ruins of dwellings and orchards, Stein found numerous textile fragments, Roman coins, wooden furniture with elaborate carving, pottery, Chinese basketry and lacquer, and documents in Chinese script which he dated to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). The V&A holds, on loan, a large number of textiles from Niya, including leather, wool yarn, appliquéd and stitched wool felt, and braided animal hair.

Similar to other fragments found at the site Niya, although bears no identifying Stein number itself.

This rectangular strip consists of two different textiles joined by stitching. Both fragments are made of plain woven pale brown wool, and one has a more open-weave structure than the other. It is unclear what this textile would have been used for.

The fragment was recovered from a site called Niya. 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 Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas. While silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism entered China from India along this route.

These textiles 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 20th century. Some are silk while others are made from the wool of a variety of animals.

LOAN:STEIN.163