Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/102

 gold, and the choicest specimens in “ ruddy gold/’ combining a good deal of gold filigrain work. The enumeration in Isaiah iii 17-24, of the articles of the mundus muliebris of the daughters of Zion, reads like an inventory of this exceedingly classical looking jewelry of Cashmere* Homer's lines, IL xxii 468-70 [describing the grief of Andromache], are, in Pope's translation ; —

"Her hards fair ornaments^ the braids that bound [oe.r^aTa, The net that held them, and the wreaths [ajtwruita] that crowned, The veil (K^Sejuiw) and diadem (irXeKTi^ G,vaSi<rpvv) threw far away. {The gift of Venus on her bridal day,}”

The dvaSecrp? of Homer, supposed by Schliemann to have resembled one of the gold ornaments found by him at Hissarlik, is almost identical with the ornament of gold pendants, often gemmed, worn across the brow by the women of Cashmere and the Pan jab, and indeed all over India, and in Egypt Those who cannot afford the dm8<V^ irAexnj often ornament the front part of the “ head band " with imitations of it in spangles and paint The K€Kpv<paAoy was the “ net” and the Kpq$€fjt.vov the “veil* 1 of Pope's translation, but the which he translates by “wreath/* and is generally translated by “head band," I have always ventured to suppose was a head ornament similar to the hemispherical golden ornament worn by women, both at Bombay and Cairo, on the top of their heads, of which one sees in collections such fine specimens from Sa want wadi and Vizianagram, The dancing girls [ u Bayaderes "] of the Dakhan, wear an ornament for the bosom, resembling the /Egls of Athene, a sort of rich stomacher, with two hemispherical caps of gold to cover the breasts*

The gemmed jewelry of Delhi has lost its native vigour under European influences, but although weak it is pretty. The little miniatures, “ Delhi paintings/ 1 with which some of it is adorned shew that the “ limners ,J of the MogoPs capital have lost nothing of their cunning since lloe and Terry so highly praised their skill* They paint not with the brush, but with a pen. The babul ornament is not only very pretty, but highly interesting,