ROMAN ORIENT AND FAR EAST — SELIGMAN 555 



Europe or the Near East. 17 The magnificent early medieval silken 

 textiles that we find in church and cathedral treasuries are not of 

 the Far East but have been woven in Koman or in Persian lands. In 

 the latter, weaving attained an intense activity, indicating access to 

 large quantities of raw silk. Though it was not until the sixth 

 century A. D. that the eggs of the silk moth (Bombyx mori) were 

 brought to Byzantium, in Persia the silk-weaving industry appears 

 to have been in a flourishing state in the fourth century. 18 Once silk 

 became common, fabrics bearing typical Sassanian designs were 

 exported eastward in considerable bulk. It is only necessary to look 

 at the plates in Stein's Serindia, portraying silks discovered in Chinese 

 Turkestan, to be convinced of this; indeed they became so popular 

 that the Chinese produced figured silks in typical Sassanian style. 

 The most striking evidence for this is the celebrated ' 'hunter" silk of 

 the seventh-eighth century from the treasure of the Horiuji Mon- 

 astery at Nara in Japan (pi. 1). The composition is typically Persian, 

 but the fabric was woven in China and seals with Chinese characters 

 are seen on the hindquarters of the horses, in place of the Sassanian 

 star. 19 From Tun-huang, Stein has figured a number of silks of great 

 beauty, showing confronted animals in Sassanian style but with 

 Chinese modifications. Two head-pieces for banners, figured in 

 Serindia (pi. 64), constitute particularly instructive examples of the 

 adaptation of a western textile motif by Chinese hands; this silk is 

 definitely hybrid, containing both obvious Sassanian and Chinese 

 motifs. The design is composed of large circular medallions separated 

 from each other by lozenge-shaped masses of elaborate foliage which 

 almost fill the background. The outer part of the medallions is 

 occupied by a double circular border with patterns of spaced elliptical 

 rosettes outside and quatrefoils inside. All this is distinctly Sassanian 

 in type, but instead of the interior of the medallion being taken up 

 by confronted animals it is occupied by four pairs of geese, quite 

 naturalistic in treatment, disposed round a central somewhat stylized 

 floral element. The geese are Chinese in treatment, so much so indeed 

 that they immediately recalled to me the birds inlaid on one of the 

 most beautiful of the lacquer boxes in the Shoso-in. This silk was 

 probably woven in China proper. 



• r This is, perhaps, scarcely true at the present day, though it was so a couple of years ago. A very few 

 pieces of silk judged to be of Chinese weave have been discovered in the West; work recently carried out 

 at Palmyra— the great caravan town northeast of Damascus on the northern edge of the Syrian and Arabian 

 desert— appears to have produced some examples (R. Pfister, Textiles de Palmyra, Paris, 1934), and it has 

 recently been suggested that a piece of fifth century silk derived from a Rhine cathedral and now in 

 Berlin may have been woven in China (V. Sylvan, Eine Chinesische Seide mit spatgriechschen Muster 

 aus dem 6. bis 6. Jahrhundert, Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, n. s„ vol. 11, pp. 22, 27, 1935. 



•i Dalton, O. M., Byzantine art and archeology, p. 684, 1911. 



» The "hunter" type is one of those popular Persian designs in which a mounted hero is shooting wild 

 beasts, "the whole framed in a medallion and repeated over the surface, the medallions being interlaced or 

 connected by small tangent circles, while the interspaces are filled with formal foliage. The huntsman is 

 usually duplicated so that the composition is symmetrical, the two figures being usually back to back, but 

 turning inwards to release the arrow" (O. M. Dalton, op. clt.. pp. 590-91). 



