It was Day who noticed that the 'sashes', as they were being referred to then, were not Arabic as first imagined, but Indian, for there were some Hindi numerals or price marks entered in a corner. Norman Brown, that much respected Oriental scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, confirmed this, saying that they were indeed inscribed with Hindi numerals: they gave in fact the exact price of the object: "four rupees, eight annas."

The tracking of these objects down does not end here, and one is astonished at the routes and channels that objects took as they travelled half way across the world. Anyone would like to know, I am sure, how these objects landed up in Sweden, of all places. In style, as John Irwin observed, the two patkas were "Indo-Persian", a term long since discarded, as it happens, meaning that the motifs on them were Persian in inspiration but the treatment and the weaving was Indian. They seem in fact to have been produced in Gujarat or Sind. From here, it seems, the patkas or sashes were regularly being exported: not only to Islamic countries in West Asia and North Africa, where they were in great demand, but even as far as Poland where they were much fancied by the nobility and by military officials. But these exports received a true fillip when the Dutch and English East India Companies began trading from their bases in western Indian ports, especially Surat. For, the route they took was not overland, with all its attendant uncertainties and heavy duties, but by sea. The English merchants were quick to see that large profits were to be made by shipping such goods , first to England, and then re-exporting them to Turkey, the Levant and Poland. A flourishing trade seems to have been established, availing of the imperial concessions granted to the East India Company, especially from the 1620's onwards. One finds notes made by the 'factors' of the company listing piles of sashes which were purchased from Surat, and then sent further. Thus, 250 sashes at five shillings per piece; 100 of them at 8 shillings per piece; 25 of them at 20 shillings per piece. Clearly, the price of the object bore a relationship to its quality or its preciousness. No visual records are available, but one can imagine guldar (flowered) or khashkhashi (of the colour of poppies, perhaps also bearing poppy flower motifs) patkas of the most beautiful kind being sent to distant markets.

When students of textile, or art historians, speak of patkas, their natural concern is with matters relating to technique and design, or cultural meaning and significance, especially in the context of royal courts. Mercantile concerns, however, were entirely different and all that one picks up from them are lists and prices, and the like. But even these one is grateful for. Or else how would one have known how Gujarati patkas found their way around a royal waist in Sweden?

While researching for a catalogue of patkas in the collection of the Calico Museum at Ahmedabad, I came upon, rather unexpectedly, the following wry little couplet in which an anonymous Urdu poet brings in a pun upon the word patti/pattika, the former meaning a bandage or strip for blindfolding, and the latter of course a patka:

(Why indeed should he not be proud of the dress of honour (he has received)? But, for that Banarasi patka to blind him, thus, to everything else?!)