for it proves that the Phoenician art, so long forgotten in Europe, of soldering gold in grains, which Castellani discovered some years ago to be still practised in an obscure Italian village, has never been lost in India.
The jewelry of Sindh and Baluchistan is similar to that of the Panjab, but is usually found only in its more primitive gold and silver forms [Plates 46 and 47]. Solid silver torques, and anklets, and bracelets are very common, of a severe style of rectangular construction and ornamentation.
The jewelry of Oudh is of the same general style as that of Delhi and Lahore. It was formerly very celebrated, but has declined, owing to the destruction of the native court at Lucknow. The jewellers of this old royal city lost all their capital during the Mutiny of 1S57, and have never since recovered their former position. Some jewellers, however, remain, and diamond cutters, who prepare the table diamond so popular in India, and the rose diamond. The finest and most elaborate jeweller’s work in Lucknow only costs 6 per cent, on the value of the raw material. The artist of the highest pretensions is happy to work for two shillings a day, and eightpence a day is considered fair wages for a good workman.
The silver filigrain work [Plate 48] in which the people of Cut- tack in Orissa have attained such surprising skill and delicacy, is identical in character with that of Arabia, Malta, Genoa, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and with the filigrain work of ancient Greece, Byzantium, and Etruria, and was probably carried into the West by the Phoenicians and Arabs, and into Scandinavia by the Normans, and in the course also of the mediaeval trade between Turkestan and Russia. In Cuttack the work is generally done by boys, whose sensitive fingers, and keener sight enable them to put the fine silver threads together with the necessary rapidity and accuracy. It is quite distinct in character from the indigenous silver jewelry of the country, as will be seen from the illustration given.
