The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.8

Language: English

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**Importance of dress :** The first step in the march from barbarism to civilization is indicated by the dress of a nation. Climatic and other causes, no doubt, influence the nature of dress; but no race can be said to have emerged from the grossest barbarism, or the most primitive simplicity, which has not risen to something more substantial, ample and artifical than the wardrobe of mother Eve. The skins of animals have supplied the place of cloth to wild races at all times; but it is only after those nations learn to convert them into leather that they can be said to have reached the outskirts of a civilized life. The Hindus seem to have made considerable progress in this respect at a very early period in their history. The *Samhitā* of the *Ṛgveda*, which dates with the Mosaic chronicles, contain many passages which show that even then they were perfectly familiar with the art of weaving not only for the necessaries, but also for the luxuries, of life. The passages, it must be confessed, are brief and casual, occurring mostly by way of similes and comparisons in hymns designed for the glorification of particular divinities; but they are not the less interesting and suggestive on that account. Thus the verse which describes night as "enwrapping the extended world like a woman weaving a garment"⁴, gives only a simile, yet that simile refers to a familiar fact whose existence cannot be questioned.

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In the same way a hymn to the Āpris makes "night and day interweave, in concert, like two famous female weavers, the extended thread to complete the web of the sacrifice".⁵ Elsewhere we read of the fathers, who "wove and placed the warp and the woof". (X.30). "Uṣā (dawn) is a goddess, in person manifest like a maiden, who goes to the resplendent and munificent sun, and, like a youthful bride before her husband, uncovereth, smiling, her bosom in his presence".⁶ Elsewhere she, "like a wife desirous to please her husband, puts on becoming attire, and smiling as it were, displays her charms".⁷ Again, "exhibiting her person like a well-attired female, she stands before our eyes, gracefully inclining like a woman who has been bathing".⁸ "Uṣas the daughter of heaven, tending to the west, puts forth her beauty like a well-dressed woman". In other places she is frequently represented as "clothed with radiance". The idea is repeated in connexion with the altar, which in one place is described as decorated in the same way, “as a wife attached to her husband puts on elegant garments to gratify him”.⁹ In a subsequent hymn, “the vast offspring of the firmament, the seven eternal ever youthful rivers”, of the Vedic age are said to be “not clothed, yet not naked”¹⁰. In the remarkable hymn, in which Trita prays to be released from his confinement in a well, he says, “the ribs (of the well) close round me, like the rival wives (of one husband);

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cares consume me, Śatakratu, although thy worshipper, as a rat (gnaws a weaver’s) threads”,¹¹ and the scholiast finds in this, not altogether [ 79 ] without reason, a reference to the practice well known in the time of Manu (VIII. 397) of sizing threads with rice water, for the purose of weaving, and which made them palatable to rats. The whole passage, however, admits of a different interpretation. In a hymn to Indra, praises and hymns are compared to “elegant wellmade garments” (*vastreva bhadra sukṛta*), as being fit to be received as a respectful present”¹² (*Upasaṁhāravad grāhyāṇi*). Commenting on this passage, Wilson says, “If the rendering be correct this shows the custom of presenting honorary dresses to be of Indian origin, and of considerable antiquity”. Among largesses given to priests by Divodāsa, the idea of a *Khilat* again recurs: thus the priest says, “I have received from Divodāsa ten horses, ten purses, ten clothes (*Khilats* of ten parchas ?), and ample food”. Aśvattha gave to Payu “ten lumps of gold, ten well-appointed chariots, a hundred head of cattle”.¹³ Gifts of “elegantly adorned and well-dressed female slaves” are recited in a subsequent book. The *Yajus* and the *Sāma Vedas*, likewise, contain many references of the same kind to clothing, and in one place in the former “gold cloth”, or brocade, for a counterpane is distinctly mentioned¹⁴;

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but as those works are to a certain extent of comparatively later date, it is not necessary to load these pages with quotations from them.