Spectacles

The use of optical lenses to correct defects of vision dates back many centuries in South Asia. In fact, a few scholars have made the (highly controversial) claim that eyeglasses were invented in Southern India rather than in Italy, based on a small amount of linguistic and literary evidence. Regardless of whether this claim is true, Indic languages have long had several interesting words for spectacles (see this paper for a short account) including any Sanskrit word for eye such as नेत्र (netra), लोचन (locana), नयन (nayana), or चक्षुस् (cakSus) prefixed with उप- (upa-) which denotes "nearness, . . ., resemblance , [or] relationship, but with the idea of subordination and inferiority" (Monier-Williams). The following is the only example known to me of glasses being used as a metaphor in Sanskrit poetry.

Devanagari text:

दृश्यतेऽणुर्महत्त्वेन महानणुतया त्वया|
दिव्यदृष्टेर्न दोषोऽयं दोषोऽयमुपचक्षुषः||

Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:

dRzyate(a)Nurmahattvena mahAnaNutayA tvayA| 

divyadRSTerna doSo(a)yaM doSo(a)yamupacakSuSaH||

– Anonymous

Loose translation: What is actually small appears large (or great) to you, and what is actually large appears small – this is not a defect of (your) divine vision but the fault of your eyeglasses.

Source: 1993 edition of Purnachandra De Udbhatasagara's anthology Udbhata Sagara (compiled in the late 19th - early 20th century), Part II (द्वितीयप्रवाहः), Verse 228.

Notes: If it was not clear already, the author is addressing a superior or benefactor who, he believes, is favoring someone unworthy ("small") and / or mistreating someone respectable ("large"). Quite cleverly, he starts by describing his addressee's innate perception as flawless with the word दिव्यदृष्टि (divyadRSTi, "divine vision"), and then attributes the latter's temporary indiscretions to the counsels of a trusted (but evil or stupid) underling who is like a lens that alters the sizes of objects in the wearer's field of vision.

I do not think this couplet is very old.