Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/168

 Woven Stuffs, Lace, Fine Needlework, Carpets, Felts, and Furs,

Its marvellously woven tissues and sumptuously inwrought apparel have been the immemorial glories of India* India was probably the first of all countries that perfected weaving, and the art of its gold brocades and filmy muslins, “ comely as the curtains of Solomon/* is even older than the Code of Maim Weaving is frequently alluded to in the Vedas, Ushas is the daughter of Heaven, “clothed with radiance/* In the hymn in which Trita prays to be released from the well in which he is confined he says, u Cares consume me as a rat gnaws a weaver's thread/* In the hymn to Apris occurs the line : — (i Day and Night spread light and darkness over the extended earth like two famous female weavers weaving a garment/* The Yajur Veda mentions gold cloth, or brocade, for a counter- pane* No information is given in the Rig Veda of the materials of which clothes are made; but in the time of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, cotton, silken, and woollen stuffs are constantly mentioned* In the Ramayana the nuptial presents to Sita, the bride of llama, from her father, consisted of woollen stuffs, furs, precious stones, fine silken vestments of divers colours, and princely ornaments, and sumptuous carriages. The Ramayana gives no names of places where particular articles of clothing were made ; but in the Mahabharata, in the enumeration of the presents which the feudatory princes brought to Yudhisthira, as their Lord Paramount, mention is made of furs from the Hlndu- Rush, of woollen shawls of the Abhiras from Gujarat, and of clothes of the wool of sheep and goats, and of thread spun by worms, and of plant fibre [hemp j, woven by the tribes of the North-Western Himalayas ; of elephant housings presented by