The late Mr. John Hare, who lived in India a long time, says, that a coarse kind of cloth, used for making sacks, &c., is now woven from Hibiscus bark.
As a further evidence, that the Molochina mentioned in the Periplus were made from the bark of the Hibiscus, we may refer to that admirable specimen of Eastern taste and ingenuity, the Sacontăla of the great Indian dramatist Calidāsa. Several passages of this poem make mention of the Valcăla, which the Sanscrit Lexicons, themselves of great antiquity, explain as meaning either bark, or a vesture made from it. We learn from Dr. Wallich, a celebrated Indian botanist, that many kinds of Hibiscus had this quality in an eminent degree, and, as their bark was in common use for making all kinds of cordage, it might undoubtedly be employed for weaving.
The Sacontăla is of a date as ancient as the Periplus. Professor Von Bohlen (Das alte Indien, vol. ii. p. 477.) asserts, that the author Calidāsa certainly flourished as early as the first century B. C. Sir William Jones makes him older by several centuries. (Works, vol. vi. p. 206.) The place also agrees as well as the time. The Hibiscus Tiliaceus, according to Sir J. E. Smith, is “one of the most common trees in every part of the East Indies, thriving in all sorts of situations and soils, and cultivated for the sake of its shade even more than the beauty of its flowers, in towns and villages and by road-sides. A coarse cordage,” he adds, “is made of the bark; the wood is light and white, useful for small cabinet-work; the mucilage of the whole plant is applied to some medical purposes.” The Molochina, mentioned in the Periplus, were brought from Ozene and Tagara, and may have come from still further North. The hermitage, described in the drama, was at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, and near the river Malina, and, according to the representations given by the poet, the Valcălas (translated by Sir W. Jones “mantles of woven bark,” and by Chézy, “vêtemens d’écorce”), were worn both by the hermits and by the beautiful Sacontăla, while she was their inmate[201].
[201] Translation of the Sacontăla, Sir W. Jones’s Works, vol. vi. pp. 217. 225. 289. Original, ed. Chézy, Paris, 1830, p. 7, l. 10.; p. 9, l. 10; p. 24, l. 7.; p. 131, l. 14. Chézy’s translation, pp. 10. 27. 142. 143. See also Heeren, Ideen, i. 2. p. 648.
“Valcălas” are mentioned in precisely the same manner in the Ramayana, one of the most noted of the heroic poems of ancient India. They are represented as coarse garments worn by ascetics.
If the explanation now given be admitted as applicable to the Molochina of the Periplus, it may throw light upon some other passages of ancient authors.
Ctesias, in his Indica[202], mentions “sheets made from trees.”
[202] Cap. 22. Fragmenta, ed. Bähr. p. 253. 326.
Strabo’s account of the webs, which he calls Serica, an account derived from the writings of Nearchus, admiral of Alexander the Great, represents those webs as made from fibres, which were scraped from the bark of trees. This would apply exactly to the supposed use of the Hibiscus for making cloth. The bark must have been first stript from the tree, and the fibres then scraped from the inside of the bark.
To the same source we may, we think, trace the idea of Arethas (in Apoc. c. 57.), that the Byssus, Rev. xix. 8., was “the bark of an Indian tree made into flax.”