These warp Ikat patterns are easily missed on textiles that also feature much more elaborate weft Ikat, supplementary weft, and supplementary warp patterns. In fact, they are not all that easy to distinguish from the decorative use of single brightly colored warp threads. Given its subtlety, it is perhaps surprising that the technique has survived at all. It is interesting to note in this regard that in recent years the warp Ikat technique has fallen into even further decline among the Thai in Vietnam to the point that it may not survive much longer.

Gittinger and Lefferts (1992: 35) believe that warp Ikat weaving was once more widely practiced among Tai and other Daic-speaking groups, but that it was gradually replaced by other techniques. Especially important for an understanding of the antiquity and dispersion of warp Ikat weaving among Daicspeaking peoples are the warp Ikat textiles of the Li of Hainan Island in southern China (see SlUbe11937, Gittinger and Lefferts 1992: 32-34, and Howard and Howard 2002a: 29-35). The Li speak a Kadai language and settled on Hainan well before the third century BC. They subsequently lived in isolation from other Daic-speaking peoples as Chinese influence spread southward on the mainland. The Li produce a number of styles of textile that are strikingly similar to those of the Thai of northwestern Vietnam. Their warp Ikat patterned cloth is made employing indigo dye and using an archaic style of foot-braced backstrap loom. Li weaving suggests considerable antiquity for the warp Ikat technique among Daicspeaking peoples, well beyond the somewhat conservative sixth century date Larsen mentions, and points to a common tradition among Daic peoples in southern China and northern Vietnam that has survived only at the margins of Chinese influence.

 

Let me turn briefly to the much more elaborate warp Ikat patterned textiles of certain Malaya-Polynesian peoples of the Philippines, Borneo, and Indonesia that are certainly better known than the warp Ikat textiles of the Daic peoples of southern China and northern Vietnam.

 

Despite difference in the degree of elaboration, is it possible that there is, nevertheless, a link between these traditions?

Despite Bϋhler's assertions of its antiquity, and although widely distributed in this area, firm evidence of warp Ikat weaving being an ancient tradition in island Southeast Asia is hard to come by. Looking at motifs is one possible avenue to explore, but the evidence is ambiguous at best. While Indian-influenced warp Ikat motifs abound in Indonesia, there are also plenty of motifs that are clearly not of Indian origin.

But do such motifs points to the presence of warp Ikat weaving prior to the spread of Indian influence across much of Indonesia?

 

Perhaps some support for the notion of an early presence can be found further north in the Philippines. Thus, the warp Ikat patterns on textiles of the Ifugao and Isinai of the southern Cordillera region of Luzon show no signs of Indian influence and can be said to resemble those of the Li of Hainan.

 

Further south it is possible that early warp Ikat weaving is associated with the influence of the so-called Dongson culture of northern Vietnam (as evidenced by the distribution of large bronze drums) a little over 2,000 years ago (see Swadling 1996 on early trade relations between the Dongson area and the eastern Indonesian archipelago). The possible Dongson connection leads us back to the Tai-speaking peoples of northern Vietnam, to whom this cultural tradition belongs.

Interesting hints of the presence of warp Ikat patterning among the MalayoPolynesian people s of Southeast Asia prior to the spread of Indian influence also comes from the Cham of central and southern Vietnam. Linguists estimate that the Sundic speaking ancestors of the Cham arrived along the coast of southern Vietnam from northeastern Borneo around 600 BC. Some eight hundred years later the Cham established a kingdom along the coast of central and southern Vietnam that showed strong evidence of Indian influence. Prior to their conquest by the Vietnamese the northern boundary of Cham territory is generally associated with Ngang Pass in Quang Binh Province, although there is evidence of Cham living further north as far as Nghe An and Thanh Hoa provinces, where they came into contact with the Tai and later Viet.

 

Maspero (2002/1928: 1) cites early Chinese sources that describe the Cham as growing mulberry trees to rear silkworms as well as what are described as "cotton trees". The latter apparently refers to Gossypium arboretum, which was grown prior to the introduction of Gossypium herbaceum.