If this people carried such arms, what must their jewelry be? An answer is found in the museum. We again find jade set with emeralds and rubies. From Trichinopoly are gold chains of the snake pattern so finely wrought that the scales are almost invisible, and the chain doubles like thread, or chains and bracelets of rose open-work, most minute and beautiful. From Madras and Delhi comes granulated gold made into ear-drops or set as bosses in open-work. About everything there is a lightness as far removed as possible from Western ideas of handsome solidity and valuable weight. In the museum a model stands for the purpose of showing how the woman of India wears jewelry. She has not only "rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," but in nose and ears, on her hand, dropping over her bosom, round her arms and waist, and loading her ankles, are stringed gems and hoops of gold.
Akin to the jewelry is the gold and silver plate. The cup, or Buddhist relic-casket, already mentioned, is interesting as being one of the oldest examples found in India, and its age, about two thousand years, only tells how much India art-work in the precious metals has been destroyed or lost. There are many excellent examples of the parcel-gilt work of Cashmere, and one shrine-screen of silver, pierced and repoussée, is exceptionally fine in design and treatment. There are tinned brass vessels with incised decorations, sculptured vessels of brass, brass incrusted with copper and copper incrusted with silver, but which can be called the baser and which the richer metals when all assume shapes of such wondrous beauty as the lotas and sarais, and are decorated with designs so pleasing and with a skill so perfect with damascened work, incrustations or enamel? The metal excipient is forgotten in the art. The enamelled huku-stand in the illustration belongs to the best Mogul period of transparent enamelling, and is painted in green and blue enamels. At Jaipur red, blue and green enamels are laid upon pure gold, and the richness and brilliancy of the result have raised the enamels of that place to the first rank among those of all the East.
Here our round of inspection may close, and as the doors shut behind us a remarkable fact presents itself: that in no branch of industrial art, either in metal-work, weaving or carving, can the science of Europe cope with the plodding industry of the East.
Jennie J. Young.