Note 213 — Chapter IX · —Description of India

As the dress of the natives was made in ancient times as at present, chiefly from cotton, this perhaps may be the substance meant here by flax. The valuable properties of the wool-like product of the cotton plant (Gossypium herbaceum, the Karpâsa of Sanskrit) were early known, as in one of the hymns of the Rig-veda mention is made of female weavers intertwining the extended thread. “The dress worn by the Indians (says Arrian, citing Nearchos) is made of cotton, a material produced from trees. They wear an under-garment of cotton which reaches below the knee half-way down to the ankles, and also an upper garment which they throw partly over their shoulders, and partly twist in folds round their head” (Indika, c. 16). This costume is mentioned in old Sanskrit literature, and is carefully represented in the frescoes on the caves of Ajanta. We learn from the Periplûs of the Erythraean Sea that muslin (othonion) was imported into the marts of India from China, and exported thence along with Indian muslin and coarser cotton fabrics to Egypt.