What is the soft shawl made from the under fleece of goats in Northern India?
Shawl inappropriate. Kashmir is India's northernmost state and was the point through which ancient India passed to the world. The Kashmir shawl that evolved from a local expertise had greater fame than any other Indian textile. The majority of the woollen fabrics of Kashmir, and particularly the best quality shawls, were and are still made of "Pashm" or "Pashmina", which is the wool of "Capra hircus", a species of the wild Asian mountain goat. Hence the shawls came to be called Pashmina. The fine fleece used for the shawls is that which grows under the rough, woolly, outer coat of the
Shawl animal; that from the under-belly, which is shed on the approach of hot weather. Materials of an inferior grade were of the wool of the wild Himalayan mountain sheep or the Himalayan ibex. However, the best fleece wool is soft, silky and warm is of the wild goats, and painstakingly gathered from shrubs and rough rocks against which the animals rub off their fleece on the approach of summer. This was undoubtedly the soft fleece wool from which were made the famous and much coveted 'ring shawls' in Mughal times. Unfortunately very inferior and second rate wool taken from domesticated