The archaeological evidence with regard to embroidery can be traced back to many ancient civilisations, ranging from Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and Mexico. It bears testimony to the value and importance given to the art of 'embroidery', both for itself as well as an instrument of inter-and intra-cultural dialogue, even political diplomacy. Embroidered fabric adorned royalty. It was valued at par with music, dance and poetry, and was important enough to be transmitted from one generation of women to next. Asia has been the home of many traditions of exquisite genres of embroideries which have a social context, an artistic form and a symbolic value.IIC-Asia Project has been, in its second phase, exploring the manner and method of transmission of knowledge within each unit and its transmission across borders. The IIC-Asia Project organised a programme in September 2005 on the theme Sui Dhaga: Crossing Boundaries through Needle and Thread, comprising a seminar, an exhibition and a craft demonstration-cum-workshop, in collaboration with the Crafts Council of India. Through these inter-locked events, attention was drawn to the role of women who have demonstrated a high degree of creativity. Through the humble and ordinary needle and thread, they established many bridges of communication between and amongst cultures.This volume comprises some of the essays presented at the seminar by participants ranging from Palestine, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. These make explicit the rich tradition of embroidery in a social, economic and political context.

Satyanarayana puja and recitation of Vrata Katha, along with partaking sirini - a typical muslim Prasada, offered to Satyapir, who identified with Satyanarayana in the Pals, are considered a well integrated ceremony by the Hindus all over India.

In the Hindu world-view, threshold is a profoundly important concept: it represents a passage between one space and place and another, with emphasis placed on creating a visual bridge between the secular and the sacred. Accordingly, the literal threshold a person crosses when entering and exiting a home or business symbolizes the threshold one crosses between the physical and spiritual realms of existence. Hindus have long believed it is possible to affect a person's well-being by using diagrams to sanctify the "threshold space." The diagrams do so by "trapping" ill will, evil, bad luck, or negative energy within their colorful and elaborate configurations, thereby cleansing those who traverse the space and sending them on their way with renewed spirit, positive energy, and good luck and fortune.The creation of the threshold drawings, or diagrams, is steeped in Indian history and culture, going back thousands of years. Practiced by women, it was long considered a vernacular art. But, as this innovative book reveals, it turns out that the diagrams represent highly sophisticated mathematical and cosmological underpinnings that have been unknowingly handed down from one generation of women to the next. As India has modernized and rapidly become more urban however, more Indian women have acquired more complicated lives, allowing less time to continue the practice of threshold drawings. And so a long-standing and critically important expression of Indian life, religion, and culture is becoming less common to the point that the tradition is threatened."Across the Threshold of India" is a pioneering new book that presents the story of the threshold drawings for the first time. In Volume I, the reader is presented with an insightful history of how the threshold drawings evolved, what they have meant and represented in Indian and Hindu culture, and how the practice became a high form of vernacular art for religious and everyday life. In Volume II, we are able to enjoy and admire Martha Strawn's original duotone and color photographs of the threshold drawings that she made throughout India during decades of work and travel, most of which are in the permanent collection of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the nation's foremost research center for Indian culture and art. By presenting the most recent scholarship on the history and art of the threshold drawings and combining that engaging tale with her wonderful fine-art and documentary photographs, Martha Strawn has given the world a unique and enduring gift: a work of visual ecology that perceptively portrays one of India's and the world's longest and least-known religious practices: the art of sanctifying space through threshold drawings." Martha Strawn s photographs reveal an ancient tradition unfamiliar to most outside of India. The intricate patterns of the rangoli diagrams, rendered in lyric detail, connect these Hindu women with others throughout millennia who have sought to find the divine within sacred geometries. Strawn effectively demonstrates how this inherited custom has evolved from a religious necessity into a fascinating and enduring form of cultural expression. This two-volume work is a welcome addition to the growing literature about Indian art and culture, with Strawn's timeless photographs at its center. " -- From the Introduction by Mark H. Sloan, Director and Senior Curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of CharlestonPublished in association with the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston."