of Quechua noble women devoted to the cult of the Sun
God. Among their duties was the weaving of clothing for the
ruler or Inka, the embodiment of the Sun God on earth. Per-
haps the most celebrated textile offering of antiquity was the
annual Panathenaia in Athens, an event commemorated on
the inner frieze of the Parthenon. The climax of the festival
was a procession carrying the costly new peplos made by the
women of Athens to the Acropolis and the presentation of
this garment to the cult image of Pallas Athena.
Offerings of clothing to temple images were frequent
occurrences throughout Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Con-
fucian Asia. In late imperial China, for example, where the
giving of prestige cloths marked the New Year as well as
birthday celebrations, many of the city gods were presented
on these occasions with new robes, cut especially large and
often without side seams, a fact frequently recorded in pious
inscriptions by donors.
Icons. In some cultures textiles themselves are venerat-
ed. The effigies of the hearth deities worshiped by nomadic
Mongols were made entirely of felt. These special effigies,
called ongot, one identified as male, the other female, were
kept inside the yurt. In Buddhism, before the development
of a rich figural iconography following the second century
CE, images of the Buddha’s attributes, including his mantle
and his throne with its textile-covered cushion, served the
faithful as a symbolic focus for worship. The legend and the
numerous illustrations of Veronica’s veil or the much-
celebrated linen shroud preserved in the cathedral at Turin,
which bears a human image said to be that of the crucified
Christ, are two examples of venerable textiles from the Chris-
tian tradition. Among Muslims the presentation of the cloth
cover from a saint’s tomb is a means of conveying blessings
on an honored visitor.
Among the Toraja tribes of central Sulawesi, a group of
sacred textiles called ma‘a and sarita embody spiritual power.
These textiles are heirlooms handed down through families;
they are used for display on many ritual and ceremonial occa-
sions. Some of these textiles are of local manufacture, but
many are made of imported Indian cotton cloth that has
been painted with Torajan symbols.
In Tibet, man:d:alas depicting various deities in the Bud-
dhist pantheon were constructed in the appliqué technique
from Chinese silks and other exotic fabrics donated to
monasteries. The most impressive examples were the gigantic
man:d:alas measuring over twenty meters in length that were
displayed once a year against the facade of the Potala in
Lhasa.
Creation of a sacred place. The place where a ritual or
ceremony is performed may have a temporal as well as a spa-
tial dimension. The suspension of normal time to create a
temporal framework in which humans can commune with
the supernatural can be aided by textiles in several ways. For
example, the repeated use of textiles or sets of textiles, such
as the red vestments and altar furnishings employed in the
Western Christian Church within the same context over
time (e.g., for feast days of martyrs), emphasizes a sense of
ritual cycle that is permanent despite the passage of real time.
The use of the same textile within a sequence of events, as
is done with the geringsing cloths from the island of Bali,
achieves for the participant a sense of suspended animation.
A third sense of ritual time is embodied in the notion of
transformation: special furnishings or clothing can dramatize
the transformation of a place into the presence of a god or
of the individual into a servant or intermediary of the god.
Textiles also have spatial functions, creating a sacred
precinct within a larger profane context. On the most funda-
mental level, textiles can provide a focus for ritual. The act
of spreading a cloth, whether it is the simple linen textile that
covers the top of the Christian altar or the elaborately pat-
terned silk covers for the Buddhist incense tables, transforms
a table into an altar.
The kiswah, the most important textile in Islam, covers
the KaEbah in Mecca, a square granite structure that immures
the Black Stone. The stone itself predates the founding of
Islam, but it became the most sacred relic of the religion and
the focus of Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. The kiswah is
made of black silk with QurDanic inscriptions woven or em-
broidered in gold. Covering a cubical structure roughly
twelve meters high, the kiswah is a dramatic indicator of a
sacred precinct. It is replaced annually, and the older textile
is cut into pieces that are sold as relics.
Textiles suspended over a ritual area transform the space
beneath to offer real or symbolic protection. Some are porta-
ble, like the wedding canopies common to many faiths. In
effect they transform any space beneath them into a ritual
area and are reused as occasion demands. Other canopies
convey cosmological meaning. Those placed over altars or
above images in Christian or Buddhist buildings, for exam-
ple, serve as metaphors for heaven, contrasting the visual uni-
verse or firmament with the larger perceived but invisible
heaven beyond.
The pierced quatrefoil canopy called yunjian in Chi-
nese, meaning “cloud collar,” which is placed on the apex of
Mongol felt yurts, is of central Asian or southern Siberian
origin. Its four pendant points promote spatial orientation
with the cardinal points of the compass; the hole at the top
is called a sky door and symbolizes the gate to heaven,
through which the earth axis passes. The application of this
shape around the necks of garments, which also arose on the
steppe, conferred a notion of cosmic orientation to the
wearer.
Fabric may also cover the area on which ritual occurs.
Mats and carpets indicate places for prayer and meditation
in most Asian cultures, which did not develop elaborate fur-
niture for sitting but lived primarily on the floor. For exam-
ple, small square woolen carpets decorated with Buddhist
symbols were commonly used by Buddhist monks in Tibet.
High-ranking clergy, however, often sat on silk-covered
cushions.9090 TEXTILES