Eri is the warm, matte silk of Assam. Of the valley’s three great silks, it is the one that no creature dies to make. It is spun from the open cocoon of the domesticated silkmoth Samia ricini, sometimes classed as Samia cynthia ricini. The moth is one of only two silkworms fully domesticated by humans, the other being the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori. Its cloth is soft, woollen and ivory, long woven on the home looms of the Bodo and the wider valley. Today it is prized far beyond the region as a sustainable, cruelty-free fibre, kin to the golden muga and the white pat that complete Assam’s three-silk triad.
The silk that lets the moth fly
What sets eri apart is the way it is made. Muga and mulberry pat are reeled as a single continuous filament, and that means stifling the pupa inside an intact cocoon. The eri cocoon, by contrast, is open at one end. The moth is allowed to complete its life and fly free, and only then are the empty cocoons gathered. The gap the moth left breaks the filament, so eri cannot be reeled at all. Instead the short, staple fibres are spun, like cotton or wool, into a yarn. That single difference is the whole ethic of the fibre. Nothing is killed for it, which is why it is called the peace silk, or ahimsa silk.
The name carries this origin. Eri comes from the Assamese era, meaning castor, the plant whose leaves the silkworm chiefly feeds on. Among the Bodo the silk is known as endi or indi, and it is also recorded as errandi silk. The worm will also take other leaves, such as those of the kesseru tree, but castor is its mainstay in the valley. The rearing is woven into the agrarian household. The castor is grown in the yard, the worms are tended indoors through their feeding life, and the cocoons are spun and woven by the women of the house. It is a domestic craft so old in the Brahmaputra valley that it is counted among the most ancient of the region’s textiles. Unlike muga, which depends on particular forest trees and an outdoor crop, eri fits the smallholding. A family can raise a batch in a corner of the yard and carry the fibre from cocoon to cloth without leaving home.
A cloth made to be worn
Eri is valued less for sheen than for comfort. The spun yarn makes a thick, soft, slightly irregular cloth that holds warmth well. That is why it has always been the silk of the shawl, the wrap and the quilt, worn against the cool of the valley’s winter. Yet the same fibre breathes and regulates temperature, so it serves in the heat as well. It is strong and hard-wearing, heavier than mulberry silk, easily dyed in earthy natural colours, and it only grows softer with age. Its own natural shades run from ivory white to a faint gold or rust-red. For generations it was the practical, everyday silk of ordinary households, and it was sometimes called the poor man’s silk, in contrast to the courtly gold of muga. The hand-spinning that no machine has fully replaced gives the cloth its slight unevenness, a texture that designers now treat as a mark of authenticity rather than a flaw.
Assam and the neighbouring hills remain the heart of eri production, though the worm is now reared across much of eastern and central India and was carried as far as Thailand in the twentieth century. India’s eri output makes up by far the largest share of the country’s wild, or vanya, silk. The cloth is woven on home looms across the valley and the hill communities, and it also reaches the great bench at Sualkuchi, where shawls and heavier household cloth are worked alongside the reeled silks. Its makers, chiefly the Bodo, have won growing recognition for the tradition.
An old craft with a modern moment
Eri has found a new audience because of what it always was. Today’s market prizes sustainability and animal welfare, and a warm, hand-spun, vegetarian silk made without killing the moth is a rare thing in it. The features that once marked eri as the humble everyday cloth, spun rather than reeled and dyed in earthy natural shades, are now exactly what designers and conscientious buyers seek. Nothing about the fibre itself has changed. Only the value placed on it has. That shift has carried eri from the village loom to the design studio and the export shelf, and drawn new attention to the weaving households of the valley and the hills where the worm is reared. At heart, though, eri stays the quiet, humane member of Assam’s family of silks, the clearest sign of how an old craft can answer a thoroughly modern conscience.