Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/196

 the term Tissues to cloths of gold and silver, ruperi and soneri , made of flattened strips of gold. The native word kincob is also generally restricted to the highly ornamented gold, or silver wrought silk brocades of Murshedabad, Benares, Ahmedabad, and other places ; but, as these kincobs are in their style and essential character, older than the use of silk in India, Babylonia, Phoenicia, and Egypt, the name is confusing when used in con- nexion with the history of decorative art, unless understood in a sense coextensive with brocade. The description which Homer gives of the robe of Ulysses in the nineteenth book of the Odyssey accurately describes a Benares shikargah, or happy “ hunting ground ” kincob.

“In ample mode A robe of military purple flow’d O’er all his frame ; illustrious on his breast The double-clasping gold, the King confest. In the rich woof a hound, mosaic drawn, Bore on full stretch, and seized a dappled fawn ; Deep in his neck his fangs indent their hold ; They pant and struggle in the moving gold. Fine as a filmy web beneath it shone A ve-t, that drizzled like a cloudless sun. The female train who round him throng’d to gaze, In silent wonder, sigh’d unwilling praise. A sabre when the warrior pressed to part, I gave enamelled with Vulcanian art ; A mantle purple tinged, and radiant vest, Dimension’d equal to his size, express’d Affection grateful to my honor’d guest.”

And when this passage is read with others in Homer, proof is added to proof of the traditional descent of the kincobs of Benares, through the loems of Babylon and Tyre and Alexandria, from designs and technical methods which probably, in prehistoric times, originated in India itself, and were known by the Hindus already in the times of the Code of Manu, and before the date of the Ramayana and Mahabharata.