"The growing of cotton appears earlier in India than elsewhere; apparently it was used for cloth in Mohenjo-daro.15 In our oldest classical reference to cotton Herodotus says, with pleasing ignorance: “Certain wild trees there bear wool instead of fruit, which in beauty and quality excels that of sheep; and the Indians make their clothing from these trees.”16 It was their wars in the Near East that acquainted the Romans with this tree-grown “wool.”17 Arabian travelers in ninth-century India reported that “in this country they make garments of such extraordinary perfection that nowhere else is their like to be seen—sewed and woven to such a degree of fineness, they may be drawn through a ring of moderate size.”18 The medieval Arabs took over the art from India, and their word quttan gave us our word cotton.19 The name muslin was originally applied to fine cotton weaves made in Mosul from Indian models; calico was so called because it came (first in 1631) from Calicut, on the southwestern shores of India. “Embroidery,” says Marco Polo, speaking of Gujarat in 1293 A.D., “is here performed with more delicacy than in any other part of the world.”20 The shawls of Kashmir and the rugs of India bear witness even today to the excellence of Indian weaving in texture and design.IV But weaving was only one of the many handicrafts of India, and the weavers were only one of the many craft and merchant guilds that organized and regulated the industry of India."