Handbook of the collection illustrative of the wild silks of India : in the Indian section of the South Kensington Museum, with a catalogue of the collection and numerous illustrations / by Thomas Wardle.

  • Wardle, Thomas, Sir, 1831-1909.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of the collection illustrative of the wild silks of India : in the Indian section of the South Kensington Museum, with a catalogue of the collection and numerous illustrations / by Thomas Wardle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rear silkworms, and the Emperor Hwang-te was induced to invent robes and garments from this circumstance. But Dr. Balfour states* as follows : “ There seems to be no doubt that China is the country where the product of the silkworm was first used as a material for textile fabrics, and that the industry has gradually radiated from China, as a centre, till it covers, at the present day, a number of very widely distributed areas of very diverse climatic conditions. The Chinese historians carry back the cultivation of the mulberry and the breeding of silkworms to the period of myths. If they are to be believed, the art of silk reeling was known in China in the time of Fouh-hi, a century before the date usually assigned to the Biblical deluge, and the Empress Si-ling-chi, wife of the celebrated Hoang-ti (2,602 years before the Chistian era) did not disdain to share in the labours attending the care of the insect, as well as in those of the loom, the invention of which seems to be attributed to her, and to have raised her to the position of a tutelary genius, with special altars of her own. But whatever the precise date of the discovery, it appears there can be no question of the very high antiquity of the knowledge of the worm and its product in China. A series of imperial edicts and a voluminous literature of practical treatises testify to the importance of the industry and the care that was taken to foster an art which was considered, according to M. de Rosny, ‘ best fitted to promote the morality of the people and extinguish pauperism in the empire/ ” The queen and wives of the nobles through successive generations personally attended to the rearing of the silk- worms. That this silk was of the mulberry-fed kind is evident from a further extract from the “ Silkworm Classic,” which says that afterwards, “ when Yu regulated the waters, B.C. “ 2200, mention is made in his work on the tribute of the “ land adapted for the mulberry tree having been supplied “ with silkworms, from which time the advantage thereof “ gradually increased.”! It is not known whether silk was utilised in India at so early a period as this, probably not; but that India learned the art from China is generally understood, although at what period is not known. About the middle of the sixth century, the Western World received a supply of silkworms’ eggs. These were conveyed * Cyclopaedia of India, vol. 5, p. 335. f Horsfield and Moore’s Catalogue, p. 377.