Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/89



All Indian collections are overloaded with gaudy trappings, state caparisons and housings, horse-cloths, elephant-cloths, howdahs, high umbrellas, standards, peacock tails, yak tails, and other ensigns of royalty. But they look very brave in procession through the narrow, picturesque streets, thronged with the gay crowd of an Indian town, advancing tumultuously be- tween the high, overhanging houses, which are painted storey above storey in red and green and yellow, like macaws ; or when the Maratha princes and their whole court go forth in unprepared pomp, with trumpets, shawms, high shrilling pipes, and belaboured tom-toms, into the jungle to do homage at the dasera festival to the palas tree [ Butea frondosa ] ; returning every one with his hands full of its yellow flowers to offer as gold before the idols in the wayside village temples. They are also very interesting for the designs to be found on the metal work ; and for the manner in which cut cloth work, opus co?isutum y or applique as it is termed by the French, is used in their ornamenta- tion, particularly of the horse-cloths, saddles, and girths.

Chatries or umbrellas, and chauries or horse- whisks of sandalwood, ivory, and particularly yak tails, and mur chals or fly-flappers of peacock feathers, are regarded as the most solemn symbols of state throughout the East. In the Ayin Akbari, or Institutes of the Emperor Akbar, written by Abdul Fazl, Akbar’s great minister [see Gladwin’s Trans- lation, London, 1800], the following enumeration is given