The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.220

Language: English

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**Ornaments :** The passion for personal ornaments and decoration is common to every state of society. It may have been chastened and modified under particular circumstances, but it has never and nowhere been altogether suppressed. The jackdaw's feathers and cowrie-shell necklets of some of the Pacific islanders may have been replaced in the boudoirs of Paris and the drawing-rooms of England by the magnificent plumes of the ostrich and brilliants of unrivalled lustre and in Asia by the pinions of the bird of paradise and orient pearls of exquisite perfection, but the desire for them remains the same, and equally ardent everywhere. It is not remarkable, therefore, that it prevailed to an inordinate extent in ancient India under conditions, climatic and social, the most favourable to its growth. To judge from the records and relics now accessible, the passion seems to have manifested itself in an inordinate fondness for gold jewellery for different parts of the body, and the deities of the *Ṛgveda* constantly present themselves adorned with a variety of them. Rudra is described as "firm strong limbs, assuming many forms, fierce and tawny coloured, shining with brilliant golden ornaments",¹⁰¹ and wearing "an adorable uniform necklace". The Maruts decorate their persons "with various ornaments";¹⁰² "they are richly decorated with ornaments", and "shining necklaces are pendant on their breasts".¹⁰³ The Aśvins are also adorned with golden ornaments.

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The Asuras, like their rivals, had, likewise, plenty of "gold and jewels",¹⁰⁴ and human beings, whose ornaments were no doubt the prototypes of their celestial counterparts, were certainly not without their due share. Accordingly we find the sage Kakṣīvat praying for a son "decorated with golden earrings and jewel necklace";¹⁰⁵ and among largesses to priests and Brāhmaṇs, gold in lumps or in ornaments, is prominently mentioned. In the *Nirukta* of Yāska and the grammar of Pāṇini, not only ornaments but names of various kinds of them, are enumerated, and Manu defines the nature and duties of the caste whose especial vocation was to manufacture them, and the punishment meet for fraudulent adulteration of gold. The old vocabulary of Amara Siṁha gives names for crowns, crests and tiaras for the head; of rings, flowers and bosses for the ears; of necklaces of one to a hundred rows, and of various shapes and patterns; of armlets and bracelets; of signet and other rings for the fingers; of zones and girdles for the waist for both men and women; as also of ornaments of bells, bands and chains for the leg and ankle. Although fashion has rendered the forms of many of the ancient ornaments now obsolete, most of the names are still current in connexion with their substitutes, and the sculptures of Bhuvaneśvara afford us a pretty fair idea of what their shapes were twelve hundred years ago.

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The bas-reliefs of Sāñci and Amarāvatī also exhibit specimens of a great variety of ornaments for the hands, feet, waist, neck, and head. In the absence of positive information regarding the ethnography of the people represented in these three places, it would be wrong to take the ornaments shown as illustrations of the jeweller's art as extant among a single race from the second or the first century before Christ to the seventh century of the Christian era; but taking India as a whole, they show a gradual, steady and marked advance towards refinement. The bangles, bracelets, and anklets of Sāñci, are the clumsiest possible. They are thick, rough, and heavy, almost devoid of workmanship, and large enough to cover from one to two-thirds of the legs and fore-arms. Judging from specimens still in use among the lower orders of the people away from urban influence, they must have been made, in most instances, of brass or bell-metal. The bangles and armlets of Amarāvatī, though mostly of the same patterns, are smaller, lighter and neater, and the anklets are somewhat less ponderous. At Bhuvaneśvara they are not only reduced in size and weight, but greatly improved in appearance. Amidst a few of the older forms there is quite an abunbance of specimens, which for neatness, elegance, and beauty, would not stand in any great disadvantage besides the finest specimens of their times from any other part of the world.

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Nor is this remarkable, considering the celebrity which India has enjoyed from remote antiquity for the excellence of her ornaments. Adverting to it, Mr. Maskelyne, in his *Report* [ 98 ] *on Jewellery and Precious Stones in the French Exhibition of 1866* (class XXXVI), says: "It is said that even that delicate and most sensitive instrument of touch, the hand of the Hindu, is not sufficiently sensitive for fashioning the finest sorts of Indian filigree, and the children alone are employed in the manipulation of such a spider-web of wire. Of fabrics so delicate, nothing is to be seen among the jewellery at Paris, indeed the best of the Indian filigree, and that by no means worthy of its source, is to be found among the articles exhibited under the goldsmith's class. It is to be remarked of this elegant and primitive, perhaps very earliest form of ornament in precious metal, that it had probably reached its limits for delicacy and design at a very archaic period, and has made no real progress in recent times; that, in fact, the early Greek filigraner worked with as much facility and delicacy as the Hindu artisan of our day, who inherits the skill and the methods he uses by the direct descent of an immemorial tradition.

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But there are other forms of the goldsmith's art scarcely less venerable than that of the filigranes, possessed of great native beauty, and which also have survived in India, through the long roll of centuries, as the Zend and Sanskrit languages have survived there, the inheritance of families or clans. Those forms of art are perishing one by one, as the family in whom it may have been handed down becomes extinct or lets the thread be broken, each of these hereditary industries of India moves on with time to its extinction.” It is of course impossible to expect specimens of filigree in sculpture, but the ornaments exhibited by no means fail to support the pretensions of the country to superior excellence in the goldsmith’s art.