INDIA RUGS | Persian and Oriental Rugs

INDIA, stretching from the Himalaya Mountains southward into the Indian Ocean, is a remarkable country both in its natural resources and in its development. Bounded on the north by the highest range of mountains in the world, and separated from other countries by the Indus and Bramaputra Rivers, here, apart from other peoples, the early Aryans, after making subject a native race, developed on the banks of their great rivers a most splendid civilization. There is something very fascinating about them, their history, literature, religion, and arts; and with a knowledge of these we can better appreciate the present conditions.

We may divide their history into three periods, according to Hindu, Mohammedan, or English supremacy. The Hindu, with his subtle intellect; the Mohammedan, with his chief thought his religion, to which at one time he made subservient all the arts; the Englishman, with his commercialism, has each had his share in shaping the destinies of this people. It is with the last two periods that carpet-weaving is connected.

This land of diverse races and peoples, differing so widely in their mode of life that they have little in common, yet agree in furnishing their homes most simply. For it has been said "that in India the great art in furniture is to do without it." Mr. Bird-wood writes: "You may pass through a whole palace and the only furniture in it will be rugs and pillows, and, of course, the cooking pots and pans, and gold and silver vessels for eating and drinking, and wardrobes and caskets and graven images of the gods. But you are simply entranced by the perfect proportions of the rooms, the polish of the ivory-white walls, the gay fresco round the dado, and the beautiful shapes of the niches in the walls, and of the windows, and by the richness and vigor of the carved work of the doors and the projecting beams and pillars of the veranda." This people seem filled with a true art spirit, and everything they touch shows a magic hand.

There is an old Hindu saying "that the first, the best, and the most perfect of instruments is the human hand"; and when we read of the beautifully carved temples, the inlaid work, the gold and silver plate, the enamels, the jewelry, the pottery, the fabrics—especially shawls, muslins, and rugs, which have been brought to such perfection in far-off India—we can but believe that they have been and are a race of cunning craftsmen. M r. W. S. Lilly, in his India and Its Problems, writes: "It may be truly said that the artistic spirit displayed in the architecture of their temples permeates the life of the people.