and Rome exhanged their hoarded bullion for her productions, still prevails; the cottons are prepared by some chemical process, unknown in Europe, to receive the various colours intended to be impressed either by the pencil or in the vat, and they retain them, while the substance on which they are impressed exists, with little alteration. To be more particular in regard to their mode of painting the cottons in India. M. Sonnerat, after confirming what has been just observed concerning the brilliancy of the colours being heightened by some previous preparation, and the quality of the water in which the linen is whitened, adds, "When the outline is drawn, the linen receives the first washing: an ordinary workman then extends it on the ground, and, sitting down, puts on the principal colour. After a second washing, a more skilful artist extends the cloth on a small narrow table, and marks the shades. Their pencils are made of a piece of BAMBOO, pointed and split; an inch above the point is a cushion of wool, to retain the colours, which the artist presses to make the liquid descend the length of the reed."* In the dying of cottons of different colours, an art practised by ancient as well as modern Indians, a still greater pro* Sonnerat's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 122. ficiency in chemistry was necessary to fix the various tints. In painting these cloths they undoubtedly pursued a process somewhat similar to the Egyptians, so minutely described by Pliny after having drawn the outlines of their design upon the piece of linen, they filled each compartment of it with different sorts of gums, proper to absorb the various colours; so that none of them could be distinguished from the whiteness of the cloth: then they dipped it for a moment in a cauldron, full of boiling liquor prepared for that purpose, and drew it thence painted in all the colours they intended. And, what was very remarkable, the colours neither decayed by time nor moved in the washing, the caustic impregnating the liquor wherein it was dipped having, during the immersion, penetrated and fixed every colour intimately through the whole contexture of the cloth.* Thus was the variegated veil of Isis manufactured; thus were the linens that folded the Egyptian mummies stained; and thus only could the chintzes of India receive their beautiful and varied dies. De Pauw asserts, that, with the Egyptians, only one dark dye was used; and, by the aid of acids and alkali, the cloth received three or four different tints. It was necessary, he adds, to trace previously all the *Plinii Nat. Hist. lib. xxxv. cap. ii. sec. 42. figures with a feather or a pencil, that the caustic and alkaline liquids might be distributed exactly on the places where they were intended to produce effect.* How very early the ancients were acquainted with the art of extracting colours from vegetables, and applied them in dying, may be learned from Genesis, where it is said, that, to distinguish the first-born child of Tamar, the midwife tied a scarlet thread about its arm.† This, it will be observed, was in the eighteenth century before Christ; and in the time of Moses, two or thre centuries after, we read in the following passage not only of the great progress of the ancients in the art of dying, but in several others intimately connected with the subject of these Dissertations. And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and silver, and brass, And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim-wood, Oil for the light, spices for anointing oil and for sweet incense, * De Pauw's Philosophical Reflections on the Egyptians and Chinese, vol. i. p. 206. + Genesis, cap. xxxv. v. 28. Onyx-stones, and stones to be set in the ephod and in the breast-plate.* At the same time how very familiarly the ancients must have been acquainted with some cчemical process for permanently fixing colours is evident from Arrian, who relates, that, amidst other spoil found at Susa by Alexander, were five thousand quintals of Hermione purple, which exceeded that of Tyre in beauty, and had been hoarded up there by the Persian sovereigns during the space of one hundred and ninety years, but the colour of which was as fresh and beautiful as if just come from the dyer. Thus far have we considered the progress of the ancient Indians in the art of painting on cotton: their silks were probably enriched with the same splendid colours, in a way as nearly similar as their different texture would allow. After all it is by no means clear that the Indians do not possess, traditionally handed down to them from their ancestors, some secrets relative to this subject which they have not imparted to foreigners. By means of the commerce which they anciently carried on with the Phoe nicians they might have learned those secrets; for it has been suspected that the TIN which they so abundantly imported from the Cassiterides, or British isles, was made useful in their *Exodus, cap. xxv. v. 3-7. famous purple, and that they greatly exalted and fixed the colour by solutions of that metal in the dying materials.* What was really known to the Romans concerning the mode of dying the Tyrian purple has been very minutely detailed by Pliny, who informs us that after having procured from the MUREX, or purplefish, a quantity of the colour sufficient for the purpose, they mixed it with salt, in which condition it remained during three days. To eight gallons of water they then added one hundred and fifty pounds of colour, which they boiled over a gentle fire, skimming the surface of the liquor from time to time, and occasionally dipping in it a lock of wool to mark the progress to maturity of the materia tinctoria. In about five hours it became perfectly clear, bright, and fit for use. The prepared wool was then steeped in the dye five hours; it was then taken out, dried, carded, and again soaked in the vat; and, being once more.dried, was delivered to the manufacturer to be spun and wrought into cloth. This was the celebrated ACapa, or double-dyed Tyrian purple, a pound of which, we are informed by the same author, was valued in Rome, at a thousand denarii, or upwards of thirty-two pounds of our * See Pryce's Mineralogia Cornubiensis, p. 17. |