Historic Handweaving in Highland Madagascar: New Insights from a Vernacular Text Attributed to a Royal Diviner-Healer, c. 1870

References

• See, among others, P. M. Larson, History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement; Becoming Merina in Highlands Madagascar, 1770–1822 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000); G. Campbell, An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); the essays in C. Kusimba, J. Odland and B. Bronson eds, Unwrapping the Textile Traditions of Madagascar (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2004); C. M. Kreamer and S. Fee eds, Objects as Envoys; Cloth, Imagery and Diplomacy in Madagascar (Washington, DC, and Seattle: Smithsonian Institution and University of Washington Press, 2002); C. Reynaud, ‘L’Etude Anthropologique et Ethnographique du Tissu Malgache’ (Unpublished MA thesis, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1996); R. L. Green, ‘Addressing and Redressing the Ancestors’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1996); R. L. Green, ‘From cemetery to runway: dress and identity in highland Madagascar’, in S. Gott and K. Loughran eds, Contemporary African Fashion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 139–53; J. Mack, Malagasy Textiles (London: Shire, 1989); S. Peers, Silk Weaving from Madagascar (London: Francesca Galloway, 2002); S. Fee, ‘Silks and soga, an historical survey of textile imports to Madagascar’, in C. Radimilahy and N. Rajaonarimanana eds, Civilisations des Mondes Insulaires (Paris: Karthala, 2010), pp. 299–336; G. Feeley-Harnik, ‘Number one — nambawani — lambaoany: clothing as an historical medium of exchange in Northwestern Madagascar’, Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, no. 14 (2003), pp. 63–102.
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• See Dez J., ‘Considération sur les prix pratiques à Tananarive en 1870’, Bulletin de l’Académie Malgache, xl (1962), pp. 42–61; N. J. Gueunier, ‘L’enfant qui s’enquiert de la mort, un conte malgache entre écrit et oral’, in L’Extraordinaire et le Quotidien, xxxii (Paris: Karthala, 2000), pp. 145–71; N. J. Gueunier, ‘Andrianabo, une version du mythe d’Ibonia dans le manuscrit de l’Ombiasy (1864–1870)’, Etudes Océan Indien, xxxii (2001), pp. 65–82; L. Rabearimanana, ‘Mystique et sorcellerie dans le manuscrit de l’ombiasy (Manuscrits Hova de la Bibliothèque Grandidier 1864–1870)’, Omaly sy Anio, i–ii (1975), pp. 295–323.
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• The two copies of the Ombiasy MS are today located in the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France and at the Académie Malgache, Antananarivo, Madagascar. The latter is bound in red leather embossed with the title Histoire de Madagascar par un indigene (en malgache), Code AM 412. In Grandidier’s defence, when using material from the Ombiasy Manuscript in his own writings, he did cite it, referencing it as the ‘Manuscrit Hova’, ‘Hova’ being an archaic term for Merina.
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• Technically, of course, the Ombiasy Manuscript is not a manuscript, since it has been published. Nevertheless, to the present day, scholars continue to refer to it as such and I continue the practice here.
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• Interestingly, in writing of silk, Things for Making Cloth does not distinguish between indigenous ‘wild’ silk of the Borocera genus, and ‘Chinese’ silk, Bombyx mori, which the Malagasy first imported in skeins from Arab traders before they themselves developed Bombyx sericulture from the 1820s. The chapter refers to both types of silk by the single term landy. However, the list of weaving goods for sale at market, located elsewhere in the MS, distinguishes the two types, denoting Bombyx as landy kely (‘little silk’) and indigenous silk by the unusual expression ‘silk of the Merina’ (landy ny Merina). Landibe, ‘big silk’, is the more common appellation for Borocera.
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• Scientific identifications of dye plants come from P. Boiteau, Dictionnaire des Noms Malgaches de Végétaux, 4 vols (Paris: Edition Alzieu, 1999) and D. Cardon, Natural Dyes; Sources, Tradition, Technology and Science (London: Archetype Publications, 2007).
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• Formerly Imbricaria madagascariensis.
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• Ellis W., History of Madagascar, 2 vols (London: Fisher, Sons & Co., 1838). The term olitra in Malagasy refers to both maggots and caterpillars. Ellis describes the olitra as spinning red cocoons thus indicating a caterpillar.
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• Ellis, History of Madagascar, p. 279.
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• Aujas L., ‘Notes historiques et ethnographiques sur les Comores’, Bulletin de l’Académie Malgache, 14 (1912) pp. 139–52.
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• Domenichini-Andrianina M., ‘Le Travail de la Soie sur les Hautes Terres de Madagascar, une Approche Technologique’ (Unpublished MA thesis, Université de Paris X-Nanterre, 1988); Green, ‘Addressing and Redressing the Ancestors’; Mack, Malagasy Textiles.
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• Fee S., ‘The akotifahana silk brocades of highland Madagascar’ (forthcoming).
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• Domenichini-Andrianina, Le Travail de la Soie.
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• Peers, ‘Aspects of hand-loom weaving in the highlands of Madagascar’, p. 149.
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• Green, ‘Addressing and Redressing the Ancestors’; Fee, ‘Cloth in motion’.
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• The translation of lambo tapaka remains problematic. According to Noël Gueunier (personal communication), the term may indeed refer to lambo, the wild boar of Madagascar, although historically the Malagasy considered this animal as ritually polluted. It may, as Webber suggests, be a corruption of lamba tapaka, ‘broken cloth’ (R. P. Joseph Webber, Dictionnaire Malgache-Français (Ile Bourbon: Etablissement Malgache de Notre-Dame de la Ressource, 1853) or the term lambo may, as Philippe Beaujard argues, actually have originally referred to cattle, an animal with high ritual and economic value in Madagascar; P. Beaujard, Dictionnaire Malgache (Dialectal) — Français. Dialecte Tañala, Sud-est de Madagascar (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996).
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• Larson, History and Memory; P. Machado, ‘Cloths of a new fashion: Indian Ocean networks of exchange and cloth zones of contact in Africa and India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in G. Riello and T. Roy eds, How India Clothed the World (London: Brill, 2009) pp. 53–84; Campbell, An Economic History; W. G. Clarence-Smith, ‘The Cotton Textile Industry of Sub-Saharan Eastern Africa in the longue durée’ (Unpublished manuscript, forthcoming).
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• Fee, ‘The political economy of an art form’.
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• As weaving supplies for sale at market, the Ombiasy MS lists: indigenous silk, both undyed and dyed black with indigo; indigenous silk dyed red with nato; reeled Bombyx silk; spun Bombyx silk; unprocessed Bombyx silk; spun indigenous Borocera silk (landy ny merina); cocoons of Borocera silk (landy ny merina); spun cotton; cotton fluff; plied hemp; unplied hemp; raffia; nato bark for dying red; banana ash for dying indigo; indigo balls; indigo leaves; see Giambrone [1972], pp. 103, 105.
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• Fee and Rasoarifetra, ‘Dye recipes from the past’.
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• The intervening pages 262–66 concerning dyeing techniques are not included here as we have discussed and translated them elsewhere; see Fee and Rasoarifetra, ‘Dye recipes from the past’.
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• The Malagasy handspan is about 30–40 cm.
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• The highland Malagasy use a high whorl drop spindle.
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• Originally, only women wore tailored upper garments, known as akanjo, a term later applied to men’s shirts as well.
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• The Paris MS version has sisiny for sikiny.
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• The term rongo has been lost from contemporary usage and memory. It most likely referred to weft twining rather than to the woven end band (transverse selvedge), the latter being made in Imerina only into the late nineteenth century.
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• The term for metallic beads, firaka, literally means lead. However, beads were also made of tin and perhaps even occasionally silver.
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• The sora-damoa of the original text has been understood as sora-damba.
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• See note 38.
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• Unfortunately, Things for Making Cloth does not provide a detailed description of the arindrano. Museum collections and images reveal that the most popular Merina version featured a centrefield of evenly spaced groups of very narrow black, green and red stripes on a white ground.
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• Mihana landihazo has been understood as mifahana landihazo.
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• Due to limitations of space, most of the intervening pp. 274 to 279, comprising a subsection entitled ‘And the manners of weaving tools’ (Ary ny fombany zavatra fanenomana) which describe in minute detail the loom parts and the steps in the weaving process have been omitted. These have been described in other nineteenth-century published works.
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• Saikitra is an archaic Malagasy term for a man who adopts the cultural — and sometimes sexual — role of a woman. Sarim-bavy, the modern highland term, literally means ‘image of a woman’.
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