Indigenous Dyes of the Madras Province

Abstract

Dyeing is a very ancient industry and it is known that barbarians in emote ages painted their bodies with gay colours. It is difficult to decide as to which of the three countries, India, China and Egypt, was the first to learn the uses of vegetable dyes. Though India is one of the countries to originate the art, we have not gone far in improving it on scientific lines. The Westerners learnt the art from the East and step by step improved it to a fine degree in which their knowledge of chemistry was very helpful. With the first World War, aniline dyes, which are products of distillation of coal tar, replaced the vegetable dyes to a large extent. The advent of the Second World War has made the import of these dyes into India very klifficult. The plight of handloom weavers of this Province is very hard and very high prices are demanded for the artificial dyes. This is an opportune time to study and develop this industry not only by a study of the chemical processes and skilful combinations of colours but also by a search for new plants that may yield dyes. Most of the important indigen- ous dyes of this Province, with the local names and short descriptions of the plants from which they are extracted, mordants and uses of the dyes are given below. It is hoped that it will be of assistance to those who are interested in this ancient industry which is full of scope for development.