I wonder what were the natural sources of other colors like red, yellow, green etc.

Asad, Interesting question, got me thinking of all the colorful sarees used for generation in India and all the carpets with beautiful colorful designs made a long time ago. Most of the colors were derived from plants and soil. Yellow was most likely turmeric, red was kumkum (Crocus) and for green there are many types of leaf chlorophyll matter. Then there was the soil derived colors as some soild can stain your clothes, red, brown etc. I was also thinking of the Ajanta paintings and the colors used then and a search resulted in the following. http://www.india-crafts.com/paintings/natural-dye-paintings-of-india.html

The backbreaking work made the workers revolt...It was suppressed and they were sent to the Kalapani...

Thanks "Rare Books" for sharing this painting!

Different colours were from different sources depending on the region. Just as we like Kandhari anar or pomergranate , the best reds came from manjishtha a creeper from Afghanistan.Amul butter uses a natural colourant known as Annato grown in Andhra. Yellow was from Harada and Anar Chilca, turmeric being very fugitive. If you want to know more , go to this link , Dastkar Andhra is the leading NGO in India reviving Natural dyeing and handloom. http://www.dastkarandhra.org/natural-dyes.htm

Francis, Kalapanai was West Indies?

Arvind: It may come to you as a surprise but Kala Pani was the Andaman (and Nicobar) Islands, not the West Indies. I do't think any one is banished there anymore.

I don't think turmeric and kumkum were used as dyes?

@ Shekhar , turmeric was and is used as a dye to give a shine to the green, by "lepai" on the indigo.

In the early 1960s , my late father served as the Director of the 'Jute Agricultural Research Institute of India' . This was located in a place called 'Nilgunj ' ..midway between Barrackpore and Barasat . It was callled thus because it had once been the centre of very large indigo cultivation . In those days , years after the collapse of indigo cultivation ,the entire area around the Institute was rather pristine . Remember it being surrounded by thick forests of Bamboo, And small hutments filled with tragically poverty stricken people. However in 1956 , on a plot of land just outside the premises , my father established India's first 'gamma garden' . Where they'd irradiate variety of crops using a Co 60 source - specially imported from Phillips in Holland. What I still find mind blowing is that there were quite a few young Chinese living in hutments throughout the Nilgunj and Barasat area.Used to see them bycycling around the area . But what exactly they were up to no one seemed to know . This was the era of the "Hindi -Chini Bhai -Bhai '. However the fact that they suddenly vanished , around the time of the 1962 Chinese Aggression , led many at the time, to believe they were really Chinese 'agent provocateurs' .

Actually natural indigo is grown in India . I visited Kerala Ayurved in 1994 and they use it for hair oil ! http://www.keralaayurvedics.com/medicines/thailam/neelibhringadi-ayurvedic-hair-oil.html And also for hair-dyes http://www.henna.theindiancenter.com/indigo.html Natural dyes are now being used more in cosmetics and food than fabric dyeing.

Sunny: Haha. Now I know why some kids have blue hair these days! Be careful using weird stuff on your hair. Jaacob: I wonder if any useful mutant crops came out of gamma irradiation in India. The process is totally random. Also, the Chinese living in Calcutta may have been driven out by 'over-zealous Indian patriots'. It is much too easy to blame the minorities for being 'anti-national'. This has happened all through history and still goes on even in developed countries. The French just expelled the Roma (but not for being anti-national - just being different).

I have two questions from the dye- expert Mr Naradmuni. First, briefly, how is the blue dye extracted from the indigo plant? Second, why on earth the indigo plant makes so much of the blue dye, which no other plant does? Or is it just that God (or someone) created it to keep the rangrezes employed?

Extraction and dyeing , both are long processes. Natural dyeing according to me use lot more water than chemical dyeing , but then who knows lifetime analysis.Asad bhai , this link is a good one http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Indigo.html . Neelgars call the Indigo vat a snake and themselves snake-charmers. There are lots of local secrets which are kept close to their heart , just like local medicine - some add interesting ingredients like fermented flour . The management of the vat with lime is a skill learnt over time to get good shades. Natural dyeing is much like cooking , you have no guarantee of the taste , similarly you cannot have constant colour. In the dye business there is always a trade-off between fastness, easy applicability. And then many modern chemical processes have rubbing fastness problems. The main issue with Indigo is light-fastness, if kept for long , a faded line appears along the folds.

Sunny: With your extensive knowledge of this dying art, have you considered writing a short book on the use of natural dyes in India? This kind of knowledge should be preserved; it is an important part of our heritage. And you are gifted with writing skills too. I just read the link provided by you and it answered most of my questions. Thank you. Since some of the products of chemical synthesis are hazardous, the indigo plant would be a perfect candidate for genetic engineering. It should not be difficult to manipulate the genes to overproduce indigo. Also, it should be possible to clone these genes in bacteria and get them to produce indigo in fermenters. So, if you want to be rich and famous, this is your chance!

@ Asad you are right about the possibility of biological means to work with natural dyes. Maybe people are already working on this as ecological sustainability and safe colour is big on radar nowadays. There are already books on these processes, what I have are stories - human interactions in cultural context . But I am too much of the oral history type to write so much , chatting on FB is an extension of that. More than 300 words at one go is almost impossible. As for money and fame , am too much of a "rasik" for that !

All in all...its RBSI's gain ! : )

this was a very enlightening thread indeed gentlemen.Lots of colours in rajasthan were derived from powdered stones, vegetables and flowers too.

Hello, I am fascinated by the discussion of dyes going on here. Indigo displaced Woad in Britain as the best source of blue dye in the 17th Century. There is a good article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_dye about its history. The Romans were bringing it to Europe from India. William Simpson was a particularly fine artist. I knew his paintings from the Crimean War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Simpson_-_Crimean_War_-_Huts_and_Warm_Clothing_for_the_Army.jpg but had not realised that he went on out to India. Nick Balmer

Re. the 'irradiation' ....not being a biologist or any kind of scientist I really wouldn't know if anything came of it . You see it was way back in the period 1956 to early 1964 , when I was barely in my teens . If I remember 'Nature ' did publish his article on this circa 1961..but I'll have to confirm that with my sister who has a far better 'fix' on that . As far as the Chinese go ..well these were young Chinese men who apparently lived among the villagers in the general Nilgunj - Barasat area. And most definitely not the Chinese , who lived in Chinatown , pursuing their traditional business activities in and around Calcutta city . Perhaps you might remember it was these Chinese ...long settled principally in places like Calcutta's Chinatown ..who were rounded up by the authorities ..and shipped off to internment camps in places like Rajasthan.

Perhaps the Chinese were shopping for some natural dyes for their leather works!

@Sunny Naradmuni: Books are always written 300 words at a time. History is also "human interaction in cultural context". We cannot leave the future to oral traditions particularly when we work in prose. So do take up Asad Ahmed's suggestion. :)

Have to say one is certainly relishing these 'reams' of conjecture ..and banter . However If only you'd seen the area in those times .circa 1960 to 64 you'd realize there were next to no natural dyes to be had for love or money. Just paddy fields . jute fields and 'talabs' interspersed with tiny hamlets. So can't see groups of Chinese youth shopping for any such dyes !! I don't know how many remember those days of Hindi - Chini Bhai- Bhai or Panchsheel ...but Eastern India was where the 'action' was certainly from the Chinese . So if there were young Chinese men casing the joint in and around Barrackpore - Nilgunj - Barasat ..you can bet there were many many more in many many other locations - similarly occupied ! Please bear in mind Eastern India was still the economic ( and perhaps cultural ) powerhouse in the 50s and early 60s. It was also strategically critical to the Chinese ...inter alia with fault-lines and fissures ( esp. agrarian poverty ) that were just ripe for being exploited and even triggered off .

@Sunny :I second what Mr Ahmed says. I had the good fortune of meeting Mr.Kripal Singh Shekhawat year before last.His name is legion and synonymous with blue pottery in the world. He had an enchanting studio where he took me ,with boxes in which there were natural dyes and colours . He was a walking talking encyclopaedia on natural colours , dyes and their origins.Most colours he used in his pottery ,frescoes and murals were of Iranian origin including their names which are to this day Persian. I wish i had documented what all he had said.I thought I will do so in my next visit but he passed away soon after that. The art of blue pottery came to India from Iran. They have an entire mosque in blue pottery but the art is extinct there now. It is the only pottery in the world which is made without clay but with quartz. Mr. Shekhawat's studio was large with all manners of books and coffee table books of world art. He was a visiting faculty guest lecturer and professor at several universities world-wide.And was very very well travelled indeed. I remember asking him to distinguish between oriental and occidental art. I asked him "Don't all our miniature painting traditions, murals, sculptures,frescoes pale in comparison to the heights achieved by baroque artists and renaissance painters and sculptors?" He was silent and after a pregnant pause replied "No" I asked him "well the roman statues are so real that surgeons can actually operate upon them" He replied " they are." I asked "aren't great masters paintings great ?" "How would you rate Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.Aren't their paintings awesome ?" He replied "they are" Then we discussed the heights achieved in architecture during the Mughal period and the South Indian Temple architecture.We discussed domes and islamic art of Jerusalem and the middle east/ North Africa and also cathedrals of Europe. We discussed the rich block-printing traditions of Jaipur and tye and dye art as well. I asked him what distinguishes oriental art with occidental. How do you rate world art ? He replied "I would rate Oriental higher by any day" I was dumbfounded that this gentleman concedes all the greatness achieved by the Europeans but still rates Oriental art higher ? I asked the great master "is it because you are an Indian/Asian?" He began to laugh and said "no" He could see that i was ill at ease and eventually gave an answer that still resonates in my mind to this day. He said " Western art and music does not have life" "Their statues are real in terms of physical beauty and near perfect in terms of proportions but stare into nothingness. Their music is written down and is played just in the same way time and again.Physical beauty has been accorded great emphasis in western art. But their statues and paintings are lifeless" "While oriental art is throbbing with emotions and life" He said "oriental music is also written down but is played and performed as per the season and time of the day and most importantly as per the mood of the audience at hand" I apologise this has gone really long.

@ Digvijay , I too had the good fortune of meeting Kripalji many years ago. He was an artisan and artist which is a very rare combination. India has suffered immensely due to the Brahmanical tradition and Babudom of the British creating a culture of hatred of hand-work . We are divided in our heads and hands. We experienced this ourselves while working and living with artisans in rural Rajasthan. So even in modern times we take up outsourcing of call-centres and not manufacturing as we love to sit in offices and do clerical stuff. Kripalji was that combination of imagination and labour . He created beautiful things with his own hands . Btw stone colours and minerals for pottery and miniature painting are whole another tradition altogether. We are so incredibly lucky in having so many living processes which our middle-class and our elite have'nt nurtured to its full potential. Thailand being a democratic Kingdom has the King and Queen as the main patrons of craft. I have been there many times to see the beautiful and creative ways they have redesigned and retooled craft processes. It is the only place in the world where a architect-designer and a carpenter co-create furniture , the exhibition is inaugurated by the PM, the main newspaper carries equal billing stories on both.

Indigo crops are being grown with much profit in Bangladesh. The leaves sell for the famous dye and the stems as firewood. Grown alongside rice it gives liquid-cash to the farmers . And it has led to a beautiful natural- indigo based textile village industry employing more than a thousand embroiderers, weavers, spinners,dyers using the most advanced Shibori tye-dye techniques along with traditional quilt making using patchwork. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=156960

@Sunny: Indeed you have summed it up quite well Kripal Singh Ji was an artist as well as an artisan par excellence which is quite a rare combination alongwith being so well versed with world art traditions and also well read and travelled too. Yes living traditions is what distinguishes us with the rest of the world. The Iliad and Odessey are dead in Greece but the ballads of Bhopas of Rajasthan ,Aalha Oodal singers of MP and Teejanbai are still carrying on age old traditions of singing and keeping the art alive.It is a miracle that these have survived to this day despite glitzy and loud bollywoodisation. Whether it is Maheshwar or Chanderi or Paatan ka patola or the tye and dye artists of Bikaner or Gujarat or the Doriyas of Kaithoon , zari makers of Surat, Persian carpet makers of Jaipur and Muzafferpur, artists of blue pottery, taarkash of UP, Zardozi embroiders of Agra, silawats sculptors of Jaipur etec etc ...I have had the good fortune to see them all. at work....and they never cease to amaze me Interesting to note the efforts of the Thai royals in preserving their heritage.Most of these creole art traditions thrived and reached their zenith under royal patronage only world-wide, didn't they? It was heartening to note how indigo plantation has got revived in East Bengal .So the wheel as come full circle after all. But i remember reading in my history books how indigo plantation renders the land barren. Is that true? First it was micro credit then successful family planning and now indigo plantation and the mushrooming ancillary industries .... Bangladesh is surely turning around slowly. I also learnt from you that 'Shibori' is a tye and dye technique I thought earlier that it was the name of the new range given to saris when i had gone buying a sari for my mum five years back when shibori was all a rage in the market !!! It is a pleasure interacting with you. This has been an ennobling exercise indeed. experience indeedexperience doubtlessly.