You might also want to take a look at (I hope this was not mentioned before; I'm sorry I was not paying attention):

Weaving the World: The Ritual Art of the "Paṭa" in Pala Buddhism and Its Legacy in Tibet

Matthew Kapstein
History of Religions
Vol. 34, No. 3, Image and Ritual in Buddhism (Feb., 1995), pp. 241-262

Jonathan
On Sun, Jul 14, 2013 at 11:24 PM, Dean Michael Anderson <eastwestcultural@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thanks for all the replies. Dipak’s mention of the Mudrārākṣasa is dated at the 4th century CE at the earliest. The word for cloth he mentions is the same one I was interested in: paṭa.

Joseph pushes it a bit farther back to the first or second century CE, although that’s still a bit later than what I was hoping for.

It may be I'll have to translate it only as 'cloth' and not 'canvas'.

Best,

Dean

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J. Silk
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