Siang & Adi Belt · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
Everything worn here was woven on a loin loom — a backstrap loom with no frame, tensioned by the weaver's own body against a post or a wall. That constraint sets the width of the cloth, which sets the shape of every garment: rectangular panels wrapped, tied or stitched into tubes, never cut and tailored. The design vocabulary is geometric because a discontinuous supplementary weft on a loin loom builds pattern in straight counted steps, not curves. Adi Textile and Galo Textile were both granted geographical indications in January 2024.
What is worn
The woven lower wrap — a rectangular panel wound at the waist and secured with a belt, in bands of red, black, yellow and white with counted geometric motifs. Ceremonial gale carry denser patterning and are kept for decades.
Worn for: Everyday and ceremonial
The woven upper garment or coat worn over the gale. Together the two are the standard formal dress of an Adi household and what everyone wears to Solung.
Worn for: Everyday and ceremonial
A thick woven blanket-coat, heavy enough to sleep under, worn draped in the higher villages. It is the warmest thing a loin loom can make and it takes a long time to weave.
Worn for: Cold weather and ceremony
The man's coat and the loincloth worn under it, with a dao carried at the waist in a cane or wooden sheath. The dao is a working tool first — it clears jhum, splits bamboo and butchers — and dress second.
Worn for: Everyday and ceremonial
A tightly plaited cane cap, historically finished with bear fur, boar tusk or hornbill beak on ceremonial versions. Wildlife protection law has pushed most of those materials out of use and substitutes are now normal, which is a live conversation in the community rather than a settled one.
Worn for: Ceremonial and hunting
Hair is worn knotted and pinned rather than loose, with the placement of the knot and the pin historically indicating community and status. The Galo, Adi and Tagin conventions differ from one another in ways an insider reads instantly.
Worn for: Everyday
Weaves and textiles
Loin-loom weaving in wool and cotton, dyed with forest-plant dyes, producing the galuk, gale and gadu. Granted a geographical indication in January 2024 in a batch of twelve Arunachal products.
The Galo weaving tradition, with its own motif set and colour conventions, registered as a separate geographical indication in the same January 2024 batch — the two communities' weaves are related but the state's own filings treat them as distinct.
The loom itself, documented under this name in the technical literature — a set of sticks, a backstrap and a breast beam, portable enough to be rolled up and carried, which is why weaving survived where furniture did not.
Woven on a portable loin loom, in a narrow palette of black, white and a few line colours, and quite unlike the Adi and Galo weaves next door. Registered as a geographical indication in January 2024. It belongs to the Apatani specifically, not to the belt at large.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Siang & Adi Belt — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (10)