The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.32

v1.c10.32

**Various places where stuffs were manufactured :** The *Rāmāyaṇa* does not give us any clue to the different places which were noted for the manufacture of particular articles of clothing ; but some hints are available on this subject in the *Mahābhārata*. In the *Sabhā Parva* of that work, the poet enumerates the several presents which princes and potentates from various parts of India, brought to the presence of Yudhiṣṭhira, and among them are mentioned clothes and skins, the former made of wool and embroidered with gold, being in fact shawls and brocades ; the latter, “ the skins of animals that live in holes and wild cats, intending probably furs of varieties of the martin and weasel families ”, brought by the Kāmbojas or people of the Hindu Kush ; “ blankets of various manufacture ” by the Ābhīras of Guzerat ; clothes of diverse kinds not made of cotton, but of the wool of sheep and goat, or of thread spun by worms (silk ?) or of *paṭṭa* vegetable fibres or hemp-linen, or made by machinery (woven ?), by the Scythians, Tukharas and Kankas ; housings for elephants, by princes of the Eastern tribes, lower Bengal, Midnapur and Ganjam ; and fine linen (? muslin), by the people of Carnatic and Mysore ”.²³ After a careful study of this passage, Professor Wilson is of opinion that “ silk, both raw and manufactured, was no doubt an article of import from China into India at a very early date ”.²⁴ In the first century before Christ, king Śudraka makes the buffoon of his play, the *Mṛcchakaṭika*, enquire about the brother of a courtezan :