The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

'^'^'* ANCIENT HISTORY OF
^Ve or thirty ells of it put into a turban will not weigh four
ounces*."
An English writer, at the end of the seventeenth century, in
a remonstrance against the admission of India musUns, for
which, he says, the high price of thirty shillings a yard was
paid, unintentionally comphments the delicacy of the fabric by
stigmatizing it as " only the shadow of a commodityf."
Tlie late Rev. William Ward, a missionary at Serampore,
informs us that " at Shantee-pooru and Dhaka, muslins are
made which sell at a hundred rupees a piece. The ingenuity
of the Hindoos in this branch of manufacture is wonderful.
Persons with whom I have conversed on this subject say, that
at two places in Bengal, Sonar-ga and Yilkrum-pooru, muslins
are made by a few families so exceedingly fine, that four
months are required to weave one piece, which seUs at five hun-
dred rupees. "When this mushn is laid on the grass, and the
dew has feUen upon it, it is no longer discernihleX.''^
After such statements as the above, from sober and creditable
witnesses, the Oriental hyperbole which designates the Dacca
muslins as " wehs of woven windj'^ seems only moderately po-
etical.
Sir Charles Wilkins brought a specimen of Dacca mushn
from India in the year 1786, which was presented to him by
the principal of the East India Company's factory at Dacca, as
the finest then made there. Like all Indian muslins, it has a
yellowish hue, caused by imperfect bleaching. Though the
worse for many years' exposure in a glass case, and the hand-
ling of visiters, it is of exquisite dehcacy, softness, and trans-
parency ;
yet the yam of which it is woven, and of which Mr,
Wilkins also brought a specimen, is not so fine as some which
has been spun by machinery in England. The following
minute, made by Sir Joseph Banks on a portion of this yarn,
thirty or forty years since, appears at the India House in his
own Avriting, together Adth a specimen of the muslin :
* Tavemier's Travels, Harris's Collection, vol. i. p. 833.
t The Naked Truth, in an Essay upon Trade, p. II.
\ View of the History, Literature, and Mythology' of the Hindoos, by William
Ward ; vol. iiL p. 127. 3d edition.
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