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The most historic description of one such rope trick appears to be that of Ibn Batutah, an Arab or Moorish Sheikh of Tangiers, in the Volume of Travels, in the middle of the fourteenth century. The first recorded mention of this trick in India is in the ancient shastras and sutras. Shankaracharya, over a thousand years ago, in his great work Vedanta Sutra, has given not only reference but also an excellent explanation of this feat, in Sutra 17: "the illusory juggler who climbs up the rope and disappears differs from the real jugglers who stand on the ground," and so on. From this it is clear that the trick was well known in this mysterious land over a thousand years ago.

-- Notebooks Category 15: The Orient > Chapter 2 : India Part 1 > # 382