Many Indian textiles have lyrical names. Brocades are called kinkhab, a Hindi word that translates as "little dreams". The brocades from the cities of Lucknow and Benares, now called Varanasi, woven with a weft of gold thread onto a warp of brilliant color, make this flight of imagination fully understandable. Even the textile patterns were given extremely poetic names: chandtara, for example, is "moon and stars", abrawan, "running water" and shabnam, "morning dew".

Gold and silver brocades are distinguished from non-metallic fabrics by the name zari. Before the 1805 invention of the Jacquard loom and its introduction to India in the 1920s, brocades were woven on a complicated loom called the naksha. This loom was operated by two weavers simultaneously. One, sitting on a bench positioned above the warp threads and facing the harness, pulled the weft threads to create the pattern. The other, seated at the other end of the loom, mixed the colored silk threads with the silver and gold threads for the weft.

Brocades were not necessarily made of silk: one of the most beautiful brocaded patterns evolved and perfected by the Muslims for cotton cloth was the jamdani, featuring delicate flowers and leaves woven into a sheer ground. Jamdani cotton brocades were among the legendary muslins of Dacca.

Towards the end of the 16th century, the jama (man's coat) began to be made of a new kind of cloth so transparent that the trousers could be seen beneath it. This cloth, a diaphanous cotton muslin woven in the city of Dacca, soon became more greatly prized than silk. The extremely humid climate of Dacca, now in Bangladesh, made it possible to produce some of the finest cotton gauzes ever woven. The moisture in the air protected the delicate threads from breaking under the tension of the loom. The rainy season was the best time for weaving the fine-spun Dacca yarn, which produced cloth thought to be more durable than machine-woven muslins, despite its filmy appearance.

Under Mughal court patronage, Dacca weavers achieved an airy perfection that has probably never been equaled. Although the wispy delicacy of the jamdani tunic embroidered with beetle wings seen in the gallery is extraordinary, it is by no means among the finest examples of Dacca production. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (reigned 1658-1707) is said to have been angry with his daughter for wearing a gossamer muslin sari that was too revealing to preserve her modesty. The young princess justified herself by replying that she was wrapped in seven layers of fabric.

Dacca muslins varied in quality. An inferior cloth could be woven in days, but superior examples required months to complete. Fabric with a high number of very fine threads, a long length and a light weight was the most valuable. In the late 18th century, when the trade was at its height, £650,000 worth of Dacca cloth passed through customs in one year. At the 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, one of the "woven winds" muslins from Dacca caught the public's eye. It was ten yards long, one yard wide, and weighed just over three ounces.