Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/235

 refer to that admirable specimen of Eastern taste and ingenuity, the Sacont[)a]la of the great Indian dramatist Calidāsa. Several passages of this poem make mention of the Valc[)a]la, which the Sanscrit Lexicons, themselves of great antiquity, explain as meaning either bark, or a vesture made from it. We learn from Dr. Wallich, a celebrated Indian botanist, that many kinds of Hibiscus had this quality in an eminent degree, and, as their bark was in common use for making all kinds of cordage, it might undoubtedly be employed for weaving.

The Sacont[)a]la is of a date as ancient as the Periplus. Professor Von Bohlen (Das alte Indien, vol. ii. p. 477.) asserts, that the author Calidāsa certainly flourished as early as the first century B. C. Sir William Jones makes him older by several centuries. (Works, vol. vi. p. 206.) The place also agrees as well as the time. The Hibiscus Tiliaceus, according to Sir J. E. Smith, is "one of the most common trees in every part of the East Indies, thriving in all sorts of situations and soils, and cultivated for the sake of its shade even more than the beauty of its flowers, in towns and villages and by road-*sides. A coarse cordage," he adds, "is made of the bark; the wood is light and white, useful for small cabinet-work; the mucilage of the whole plant is applied to some medical purposes." The Molochina, montioned in the Periplus, were brought from Ozene and Tagara, and may have come from still further North. The hermitage, described in the drama, was at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, and near the river Malina, and, according to the representations given by the poet, the Valc[)a]las (translated by Sir W. Jones "mantles of woven bark," and by Chézy, "vêtemens d'écorce"), were worn both by the hermits and by the beautiful Sacont[)a]la, while she was their inmate.

"Valc[)a]las" are mentioned in precisely the same manner in the Ramayana, one of the most noted of the heroic poems of ancient India. They are represented as coarse garments worn by ascetics.la, Sir W. Jones's Works, vol. vi. pp. 217. 225. 289. Original, ed. Chézy, Paris, 1830, p. 7, l. 10.; p. 9, l. 10; p. 24, l. 7.; p. 131, l. 14. Chézy's translation, pp. 10. 27. 142. 143. See also Heeren, Ideen, i. 2. p. 648.]