About qushu: Carpets or Rugs with Long Hair

Abstract

The five Carpets of Lop Museum are actually kośavas or kojavas. In the Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary, kojova is explained as ‘a rug or cover with long hair’. The present paper is about some new knowledge achieved through analysis based on Kharoṣṭhī documents from Niya and archaeologically unearthed pieces of carpets which show that neither patterns of design, nor material, nor the purpose of usage did determine the terminology for carpets, but different technics applied in knotting have given birth to varied terms, and kośava or kojava designates one type of carpets. According to Xuan Zang “氍毹” kośava is the most striking tradition from Khotan. The five carpets of Lop Museum are the best evidence from this tradition. As proven, all knots of these carpets are tied in U form. This makes up one of the two conditions that make the type of carpets to be named kośava or kojava. The second one which has led to the explanation of the Pali-English Dictionary is that the carpets are with long hairs, however, it is to be noticed that they are tufted to the backside. Searching the etymology of kośava we have come to a series of Sumerian words that show a possible etymological connection with kośava. They are kuš, kus ‘skin, animal hide, leather’, kuš-amar ‘calfskin’, kušum4, kušu ‘herd of cattle or sheep; livestock’. It seems that kośava or kojava may be a compound word of Sumerian kuś ‘animal hide’ with the foregoing word of Khotanese pe’ma- and Persian pašm, both of which mean ‘wool’. Whatever the etymology is, it is quite for certain that kośava or kojava has retained itself in modern languages, from which English word cozy and German word kuschelig are derived.