- five or thirty ells of it put into a turban will not weigh four
ounces[1]."
An English writer, at the end of the seventeenth century, in a remonstrance against the admission of India muslins, for which, he says, the high price of thirty shillings a yard was paid, unintentionally compliments the delicacy of the fabric by stigmatizing it as "only the shadow of a commodity[2]."
The 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 Vilkrum-pooru, muslins are made by a few families so exceedingly fine, that four months are required to weave one piece, which sells at five hundred rupees. When this muslin is laid on the grass, and the dew has fallen upon it, it is no longer discernible[3]."
After such statements as the above, from sober and creditable witnesses, the Oriental hyperbole which designates the Dacca muslins as "webs of woven wind," seems only moderately poetical.
Sir Charles Wilkins brought a specimen of Dacca muslin 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 handling of visiters, it is of exquisite delicacy, softness, and transparency; yet the yarn 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 writing, together with a specimen of the muslin:—
