Baidie, 白疊, is the Chinese name of a fibre plant and its cloth that the histories assign to Gaochang.[1] The description fits cotton.[2]

The description

The Liang Shu says that in Gaochang there were many grasses and trees. One plant bore a fruit like a cocoon. Inside the cocoon lay a thread like fine hemp, and the people called it baidie zi.[3] They gathered it and mostly wove it into cloth. The cloth was very soft and white, and it was used in barter and trade.[3]

The Jiu Tang Shu has the plant growing in Gaochang. The people picked its flowers and wove them into cloth.[4] The Xin Tang Shu says that a grass called baidie grew there and that its flowers could be picked and woven into cloth.[5] The two Tang histories thus describe the harvest as one of flowers, and the Liang Shu as one of fruit.

The cloth in the economy

The Liang Shu does not give an amount of cloth or a price.[3] It states only that baidie cloth served in exchange.[3] The Zhou Shu, which describes the same country in the sixth century, names silver coin and hemp cloth as the means of paying taxes and says nothing of cotton.[6]

The account of a Song envoy, who travelled to Gaochang between 981 and 984, names the cloth among the products of the Uyghur country.[7] It lists sable furs, baidie and flowered cloth.[7] The translator of the account takes baidie for cotton and remarks that the Uyghurs call such cloth böz.[8]

Identification

The identification with cotton rests on the description of the plant in the Liang Shu.[2] It is nevertheless not certain, because a Tang glossary explains the word die as fine hair and hair cloth. This suggests that the Chinese of the Tang period did not yet understand cotton.[9] Another geographical work, the Kwan yü ki, names baidie as a product of Turfan and says that its threads came from wild silkworms and looked like fine hemp.[9] Some scholars take the first element of the name for the Middle Persian word for cotton, pambak.[2] If so, baidie was a product of the Iranian lands. The Chinese records name it for Sogdiana and for Parthia, and it also appears in India.[10]

References

  1. ^ Liang Shu, juan 54; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  2. ^ a b c Laufer 1919, p. 490
  3. ^ a b c d Liang Shu, juan 54
  4. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  5. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  6. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  7. ^ a b İzgi 1989, p. 57
  8. ^ İzgi 1989, p. 57–58
  9. ^ a b Laufer 1919, p. 492
  10. ^ Laufer 1919, p. 490–491

Sources

Literature

  • Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (1919)
  • Özkan İzgi, Çin Elçisi Wang Yen-te'nin Uygur Seyahatnamesi (1989)

Related

What links here1

Institutions and Titles
Farming and Taxes in Gaochang

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Baidie Cotton.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/baidie-cotton/

Last revised: 8 November 2026