The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.25

v1.c10.25

**Silk :** The case is different as regards silk. It is a substance which could have scarcely escaped notice had it been known at the time of the Vedas ; but no mention of it has yet been met with. Pāṇini, however, has not only given words for wool, cotton, weaving, cloth turbans, sewing, &c., all of which were, at his time, perfectly familiar, but also for silk for which he gives a special rule.¹⁹ In the time of the *Rāmāyaṇa*, silken, woollen, and cotton stuffs of various kinds were abundant and in extensive use. According to Vālmīki the splendid trousseau of Sītā consisted of "woollen stuffs, furs, precious stones, fine silk, vestments of divers colours, princely ornaments, and sumptuous carriages of every kind"²⁰. The woollen stuff here adverted to, has been supposed by Heeren to have been shawls, for a time when coarse woollen cloths were used to cover wagons, as was the case in the days of the *Rāmāyaṇa*, nothing short of the productions of the looms of Cashmir, the finest and most precious of woollen fabrics, would have been suitable for presentation to a princess ; but the commentator Rāmānuja believes it to have been a stuff from Nepal. That the "fine silk" was a manufactured article is evident from the frequent allusion in the work to silk vestments of various kinds, worn, not only by queens and princesses, but also by other persons of quality. When Rāma and his brothers arrived at the capital from Mithilā with their new-married brides, Kauśalyā, Sumitrā, the fair Kaikeyī, and the rest of the royal *zenana*, "eager to embrace their beauteous daughters, received the happy Sītā, the far-famed Urmilā, and the two daughters of Kuśadhvaja, all sumptuously dressed in silk, and entertaining each other with agreeable conversation, hastened to the temples of the gods to offer incense".²¹ Elsewhere we read—