Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/93

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Jewelry.

Even a greater variety of style is seen in Indian jewelry than in Indian arms. Mr. W. G. S. V. FitzGerald sent to the Annual International Exhibition of 1872, a collection of the grass ornaments worn by the wild Thakurs and Katharis of Matheran, and the Western Ghats of Bombay, which had been made by Dr. T. Y. Smith, the accomplished Superintendent of that Hill Station ; and by the side of these grass collars, neck- laces, bracelets, anklets, and girdles, were exhibited also examples of the gold jewelry of thick gold wire, twisted into the girdles, bracelets, anklets, necklaces, and collars, worn all over India, and which are fashioned in gold exactly as the Matheran orna- ments are fashioned in grass. These gold collars are identical with the “ torque ” [from Latin torquis , a twisted neck-chain], worn by the Gauls, which gave its name to the patrician Roman family of Torquatus, from Manlius having, about B.c. 361, earned immortal glory by slaying a gigantic Gaul, whose dead body he stripped of the torque, which he placed round his own neck. The Gaul, in the Roman statue of “the Dying Gladi- ator/’ is represented with a torque round his neck. Necklaces of gold are also worn in Western India which are identical in character with the Matheran necklaces of chipped and knotted grass, which indicate the origin also of the peculiar Burmese neck- laces, formed of tubular beads of ruddy gold strung together, and pendent from a chain which goes round the neck, from which k 2