on a white ground, which their skill in fixing colours by fire would easily enable them to infert into the very fubftance of the murrhins. The murrha is faid to have been a foffile production, principally found in Carmania, on the western borders of India, and in Parthia, fo that the Indians were probably potters before they quitted their first refidence in Perfia. 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 class, or cast, formed on the first divifion of the Indians as a nation, denominated CUMBHACARA, literally the potter. We know, alfo, from the report of the Athenian ambaffadors, who vifited Perfia before the invasion of Alexander, that υαλινα εκπωματα, or vefels made of glafs or porcelain, were daily used in the luxurious court of Sufa; and, as we hear of no potteries or glass-manufactures established among the Perfians, they probably were indebted for them to their connection with India.

When

* Afiatic Researches, on the Hindoo Claffes, vol. v. p. 56, London, quarto edition.

+Ariftophanes, Acharn. 1, 2.

Bb3

the

the ancients mention glass, it is to be feared
their precise meaning is not always very clear-
ly to be ascertained; and, in this inftance, the
murrhins of India were moft likely to have
been meant by the Greek words cited above:
vaλwa, however, is fometimes used to fignify
chryftal, and chryftal vafes were equally the
production of the Indian artists with the vasa
murrbina. It was in Pompey's triumph that
this latter fplendid fpecies of porcelain was
first exhibited at Rome, and the specimens.
thus difplayed, probably of great magnitude,
were, for their high value, afterwards dedi-
cated to Jupiter Capitolinus. But the luxury
and extravagance of the Roman nobility did
not permit them to continue long without
these beautiful ornaments to their tables and
fideboards; however, their value decreased
not in proportion as they grew more com-
mon, and they seemed ftill to be confidered
as precious at least as golden cups.

Surrentina bibis? nec murrhina pića, nec aurum
Sume; dabunt calices hæc tibi vina fuos.*

The murrhins refembled alfo Oriental porce-
lain in bearing hot liquors without breaking;

for, the fame author, in another paffage, tells

us,

Si calidum potas, ardenti murrha falerno

Convenit, et melior fit fapor inde mero.*

I cannot but confider the inventive nation of the Indians as the mafters of the Chinese in this and many other branches of manufacture; first, because Sir William Jones, as we have seen above, confiders the latter people as emigrated Indians; and, fecondly, because, in the above extracts from the Institutes, mention is expreffly made not only of the potter, but of facrificial vafes of ftone, that is, earthy and filiceous fubftances formed by fufion into porcelain; and there is no authentic book of fimilar antiquity which mentions porcelain as then fabricated in China, though the Chinefe have now fecured to themselves, from having discovered in that more eastern region of Afia a finer earth, denominated by them KAOLIN, nearly the whole of this lucrative commerce. In fact, there is no mention of porcelain as a manufacture of China in any existing author that I recollect earlier than the

* Martial, lib. xiv. 113.

B b 4

ninth

"The

ninth century, when the two Arabian travellers, whofe relations Renaudot has published, vifited that country, and declare as follows. Chinese have an excellent kind of earth, with which they make a ware of equal fineness with glass and equally transparent."* At this, if they were in reality Indians, there can be no wonder; but, if they were of Tartar origin, I make no doubt but that they copied, from their more ingenious neighbours, the mode of making porcelain as well as many other mechanic arts. For, notwithstanding all that M. Bailly and M. D'Ancarville have urged in their behalf, the Tartar hordes feem in every age to have been little better than brave barbarians.

The very refpectable writer cited before, Father Bartolomeo, whofe book,+ I lament, was not published when I commenced this Differtation, is of opinion that the ancient Indians were total ftrangers to the art of making glass, and that what they had of this commodity was imported into India by the Greeks

* Ancient Relations, p. 21.

+ Voyage to the Eaft Indies, tranflated from the German, P. 391.

and

and Romans. He allows, however, the truth of Pliny's affertion, that they well knew how to make artificial ftones, and were particularly celebrated for their just imitation of the BERYL.* This conceffion is very important; because, if they could give the colours requifite to form the imitations in question to filiceous fubftances or chrystal in fusion, they could not be far from the knowledge of making glass itself, though they might at the fame time import, as is affirmed by the author of the Periplus in his enumeration of the articles of traffic carried on in his time between Alexandria and India, certain species of that more curious fort of veffels of glafs ware which we shall confider presently, and for which the glafs-houses of Diofpolis were anciently in fuch high celebrity.+ It is far more probable, however, that the first great merchants of antiquity, the Phonicians, who monopolized in ancient periods the whole trade of India, had in those periods taught them the first rudiments of an art, univerfally attributed to their in

Hift. Nat. lib. xxxviii. cap. 5.

+ Periplus Mar. Erythr. p. 28, 30.

vention,