Defining India
India as we know it today has existed only since 1947; prior to that date, much of South Asia was part of the British Empire and “British India” (1858–1947) included the modern countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The Indian Independence Act (1947) integrated territories under direct British rule and the princely states under the suzerainty of the Crown and established the sovereign states of India, Pakistan, and East Pakistan; the latter subsequently became Bangladesh after secession from Pakistan in 1971. Thus, some of the historical discussion that follows refers to the Indian subcontinent as a whole while more recent material refers to modern India only.
Early Textile Production
Indian textile technology, notably the cultivation, processing and weaving of cotton, and the production of fast colors, led the world from at least the second millennium BCE. The first urban civilization in South Asia developed in the Indus Valley between ca.2600 and1700 BCE and...
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Edwards, E. (2014). Printing and Dyeing in India. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_10092-1
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