Costumes and textiles of

ARUNACHAL PRADESH

Presented by:-Mimi Daspriya

The traditional women dresses of Arunachal Pradesh have vibrant colors and myriad patterns that instantly give a feel of their tribe culture.

COSTUMES

The traditional dress of the Monpa is based on the TibetanChugba.

The women mostly wear a warm jacket and Shingka which is a sleeveless gown of light red colour with white stripes.  It is made of coarse endi.  It is lifted and girdled round the waist by a red coloured sash called khichin. 

Tibetian chugba

Monpa chugba

The warm jacket worn

over is a lavishly

embroidered full sleeve

maroon colour shirt with

opening in the front. They

generally use turquoise or red beads.

 ngama-shom- headgear used

by them.

Different types of headgears are used by both men and women.  But the most common is called ngama-shom.  It is made of yak’s hair, heardly an inch in thickness.  It has the shape of a skull.  It has no brim, but has five tapering points of about three inches in length twisted out from the body of the material to the thickness of a finger.  It is worn by both men and women. 

In cold days, a thick woolen cloak dyed red with madder, called chupa, is worn.  It is tied round the waist with a matching sash, called khichin, and is puffed out above. 

The Menfolk of Sherdukpen tribe which reside in the southern region of Bomdila wear sleeveless material made of silk with 2 edges that are pinned property at the shoulder area. The clothing is usually knee-long. Its hallmark is the skull-caps smeared with the hair of yak. Sherdukpen women dress up in sleeveless and collarless garment. Over it, they wear a full-sleeved jacket, which is embroidered and tie a waist cloth known as mushaiks.

The lower wrap around of adi, and apatani women is known as galae which has coloured stripes in it. Basically yellow and red in colour. The shirt worn by them is called the galuk.

Textiles

The textile patterns found among the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh such are invariably of geometric pattern. Most popular motives are Zig-Zag lines and angular designs. The simple and straight lines, stripes and Aa bands and similar other patterns are most common.

Contrasts and combination of colours are quite popular. The highly disciplined Adi and Apatani concentrate on simple straight line, while the strongly individualistic Mishmis go in for great celebration of pattern. 

The Adi have a great variety of straight forward patterns. There are arrangements of different coloured strips in colored backgrounds.

 The ordinary Apa Tani cloth gets in effect from a use of broad bands alternating with narrow lines, nearly always horizontal. Another style of cloth is white with borders of blue mixed with red lines and a few vertical stripes of red, green and white. 

The small  red squares on a sanctum cloth are said to represent the ferment  used in making beer.  Shapely  pointed triangles are arrows or horn bills. Circles of cowries stretched on a cloth symbolise human heads. The red colour of the shawls stands for the blood enemies, blue stand for the sky and black for the night. 

 The Apatani priests may wear special shawl on ceremonial occasion. This shawl with extraordinary design is said to have special supernatural power.

Apa Tani, priest’s shawl there is genuine spirals, some of which are actually curved. In general however, curves and wavy lines, which may be alternating upright and pendent triangles. There is a herring-bone design on the Apa Tani Priest’s shawl. Although Apa Tani weaving is simple and straightforward, there is an attractive men’s coat, black in colour and decorated with an over-all pattern of white diamonds and orange stripes interconnected and enhanced in various ways. 

Mishmi weaving is more elaborate, though here too the straight line and band is in frequent use. The commonest Konyak skirt gains its aesthetic effect by a combination of a large number of narrow horizontal lines of red, black and white set at varying distances from each other. These single or multiple line and band motifs are the simplest of all and naturally the easiest to weave, sometimes they serve as borders for more complicated designs.

It is among the Mishmis especially the Idu Mishmis that diamond designs have been brought to the highest degree of elaboration. They are woven on shawls, skirts, coats and bags, diamond within diamond, diamond plain and diamonds decorated, diamonds arranged in every possible combination.

 There is an Idu Mishmi border design of alternating triangles, each with internal repition. Rows of opposed triangles meeting at the tips and forming lozenges between them are a common feature of Mishmi coats.

 Some designs are interpreted as a frog, the human figure with head, a narrow waist and legs, the head of a Dao, an eye, scales of fish, clouds trailed across the sky, a river and the rainbow.

A row of chevrons signified the marks on the body of a snake, and the interesting pattern of rows of very small pink triangles with a white filling represented teeth visible when the lips are parted in a smile. The very diamond design, traditionally initiated by divine invention, is sometimes related to the markings on the cobra, and the eye  design may possibly have evolved from the ‘spectacles’ on its hood. 

The Gallong still continue the traditional design on the white clothes with broad rectangular design across the centre. The different varieties of bands and colour make the Apatani cloth different from that of the Gallong. The Mishmi  weavings is however, more elaborate though the straight lines and bands are in use. 

Among the Sherdukpens the some of the designs revolve around some of the stories of tales like on the popular ones narrated is that “ a girl falls in love with a snake, who is a handsome youth in disguise. In his snake form he coils himself in her lap as she weaves; she copies the markings on her lover’s body and is soon making the most beautiful cloth that was ever seen”. Among the other popular designs among the Sherdukpens are the stylized peacocks carrying a baby bird on the back, the elephants with riders, and flowers that are combined with geometric forms. The colours generally used are red, blue, black and sometimes green and yellow on a white ground.

Weaving technology

Adi bag, Gale, galu, shawl, badu, etc. made by female folk.  

The gadu is made by the cotton obtained from silkworm.

They weave in a simple machine called loin loom, cheap and mobile.

Colurs used-white, black, red and blue.

 Tiny vertical bars of red and black serve as space-fillers in the horizontal bands or even the narrow stripes. Different shades are achieved by mixing threads of black with other colours, and by closer or looser weaves. 

The shawls of the Digaru Mishmi women of Lohit are an example of a very elaborate design in weaving. The warp is black cotton but the designs are woven in maroon red, deep pink, (with a touch of green sometimes), outlined by a silver thread.

The Sherdukpen women are skilful weavers. There is no fixed place for weaving, nor a fixed structure required, for their loom is simple, light and portable. The articles woven are mainly attractive coloured bags with geometrical designs and rectangular pieces of cloth called Bogre, which are used for carrying things.  The yarn is obtained from the plains or is manufactured locally from the bark of plants known as hongchong and hongche.

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