The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.211

v1.c10.211

Fig. 54 the time and mode of putting them on, pointed out; and mediaeval Sanskrit authors allude to them pretty frequently. The *Viṣṇu Purāṇa* enjoins all who wish to protect their person, never to be without leather shoes.⁹⁶ Manu, in one place, expresses great repugnance to stepping into another's shoes, and peremptorily forbids it,⁹⁷ and the Purāṇas recommend the use of shoes when walking out of the house, particularly in thorny places, and on hot sand. In the *Toy Cart* of Śudraka, which dates from the first century before Christ, the mother of a rich courtezan is described as arrayed in flowered muslin with her feet thrust into a pair of slippers,⁹⁸ showing that in ancient times, as in the present day, women of the town were in the habit of wearing shoes. Whether family women ever used them, I have not yet been able to discover: but there is no text forbidding such use that I am aware of. At Sāñcī there is a corps of musicians dressed in kilts, and wearing sandals, tied to the leg by crossed bands, very much in the same way in which the ancient Grecians fastened their sandals. Nothing similar to them has anywhere else been noticed in India. (Illustration No. 166). The boots at Udayagiri, reaching up to the knee, have been already alluded to (Illustration No. 94), and I have seen several specimens in other parts of India. Woodcut No. 21, shows a boot taken from a figure of Sūrya found near Surajpokhar in Behar, which from the circumstance of the worship of Sūrya, a Vedic divinity, having become obsolete for over a thousand years, I believe to be about twelve hundred years old. Its top is cut aslant like that of a Hessian boot, and the rim is decorated by a border of lines and dots, the Udayagiri specimen having the top plain and evenly cut like that of a Wellington boot. Woodcut No. 22, is from an attendant of this Sūrya, and differs from the last in having