country where the first silk-manufactories were established, and must consequently be the Serinda whence, Procopius informs us, silk was brought in the time of Justinian.

The first step taken to prepare the silk for the manufacture is to clear it of the gummy substance which adheres to it, and which is done by throwing the balls into a cauldron of boiling water, which relaxes and purifies it; and then winding and reeling it off, as it is termed, into skeins on proper frames, which are alike simple with those on which they card and spin the cotton threads, and are used with similar dexterity by the pliant and rapid fingers of the Indian artist. It is then bleached, or blanched, by being repeatedly steeped in the lees of the burnt ashes of certain Indian plants, together with those of soap, mixed with a small portion of indigo, which gives the bluish cast always observed in white silks. The throwster then performs his task by reiterated twistings of the threads; after which it is consigned to the weaver to be formed into vests, sashes, and other ornamental fabrics for apparel and household furniture.

The process of dying the silk commences with a second decoction, and scouring of the substance again with soap-lees; after which it is steeped in alum-water, preparatory to re

ceiving the various colours which that salt is useful in fixing. The painting of the silks is done in the same manner as the cottons, with the difference only of abler artists and more delicate pencils being employed. The weaving it into tapestry and carpets, an art in very early practice among the Indians and Persians, is among the most curious and elaborate efforts of Indian ingenuity, and, the silk being the finest in the world, the work would be the most valuable of any produced by the artists of Asia, were the elegance of the design and the justice of the perspective at all correspondent to the fineness and beauty of the materials. The greatest part, however, of the silk produced in Bengal and other parts of India is exported raw, and in its original yellow colour. In this state many thousand bales, weighing after the rate of one hundred and fifty pounds each, are annually imported into Europe, and evince as well the immense quantities of silk-worms bred in that country as the unwearied industry of the natives in the cultivation of them,

PORCELAIN, GLASS, and COLOURED STONES.

The great number and variety of the species of argillaceous earth, which abound in this region of Asia, together with the plastic property of clay, when merely moistened with water, would naturally lead the Indians to engage in works of pottery, which afford so excellent an opportunity of indulging a fancy peculiarly lively as theirs, in the fabrication of ornamental vases and other elegant articles adapted either to domestic use or foreign traffic. Devotion operated as powerfully towards advancing this kind of manufacture as the former; it taught them, as yet strangers to sculptured images, to mould the figures of their avatars, and all the symbols of their complicated mythology, of the purest kind of this brilliant clay; to harden them in the fire; to cover them with gold and azure, the colour of the sun and skies from which they emaned; and to exalt them on high in their abodes, as a kind of guardian penates, the conspicuous objects of their reverential respect.

Though their first efforts in clay and plaster must of necessity have been very rude; yet time, practice, and increasing idolatry, could

́not fail to improve the Indian artist in this as well as other branches of mechanics; and they would make gradual advances in it till they were able to complete those more elegant specimens of skill, in porcelain, which were so highly valued by the old Romans; for, the vasa murrbina, though by some considered as fabricated of chrystal, and by others of agate, were, doubtless, only a finer species of Oriental porcelain. These, we are told by Pliny, were in such high request in the capital of the world as to be estimated, some that held three sextaries only, at seventy, and others of still larger dimensions, at three hundred, talents.*

Martial calls these vases pocula maculosa murrha, i. e. cups formed of the earth murrba with variegated spots blue and red, on a white ground, which their skill in fixing colours by fire would easily enable them to insert into the very substance of the murrhins. The murrba is said to have been a fossible production, principally found in Carmania, on the western borders of India, and in Parthia, so that the Indians were probably potters before they quitted their first residence in Persia. At least the occupation of the potter repeatedly occurs, as the reader must have observed, in the extract from the Institutes; and there is a particular

Plinii. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxvii. cap. 2.

class, or cast, formed on the first division of the Indians as a nation, denominated CUMBHACARA, literally the potter.* We know, also,

from the report of the Athenian ambassadors, who visited Persia before the invasion of Alexander, that vaλiva exπwμaтα, or vessels made of glass or porcelain, were daily used in the luxurious court of Susa; and, as we hear of no potteries or glass-manufactures established among the Persians, they probably were indebted for them to their connection with India. When the ancients mention glass, it is to be feared their precise meaning is not always very clearly to be ascertained; and, in this instance, the murrhins of India were most likely to have been meant by the Greek words cited above: vaλwa, however, is sometimes used so signify chrystal, and chrystal vases were equally the production of the Indian artists with the vasa murrhina. It was in Pompey's triumph that this latter splendid species of porcelain was first exhibited at Rome, and the specimens thus displayed, probably of great magnitude, were, for their high value, afterwards dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus. But the luxury and extravagance of the Roman nobility did not permit them to continue long without these beautiful * Asiatic Researches, on the Hindoo Classes, vol. v. p. 56. London, quarto edition.

† Aristophanes, Acharn. 1, 2.