Wooden weft beater, excavated in Niya, 100-350

Wooden weft beater incorporating comb teeth and handle

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.

This wooden, hand-shaped object is a weft beater. A weaver would have used it pack down the weft (the crosswise threads on the loom). The explorer and archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) brought it back from Central Asia. This particular piece was recovered from the site of Niya, which dates from the 2rd to the 3rd century AD.

Niya was probably the capital city of the kingdom of Shanshan whose people were of Indian origin. 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 travelled east, entering China from India.

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