503 



decline. As an extraordinary instance of their curious texture, 

 Tavernier mentions, that when the ambassadors of Shah Sefi, king 

 of Persia, returned from India, he presented his royal master a 

 cocoa-nut, richly set with jewels, containing a muslin turban, sixty 

 covits, or thirty English yards in length, so extremely fine, that it 

 could hardly be felt by the touch. Some of the Cachemirean 

 shawls are of so delicate a fabric that they may be drawn through 

 a wedding; rin^. 



In the Zinore purgunna, a country little known in the annals 

 of Hindostan, I saw human nature almost in primitive simplicity, 

 but far removed from the savage condition of the Indians of 

 America, or the natives of the South-sea islands. The state of 

 civil society in which the Hindoos are united in those remote 

 situations, seems to admit of no change or amelioration. The 

 brahmins pass their lives in listless indolence within the precincts 

 of the temples, with little profit either to themselves or the com- 

 munity. Among the inferior castes, whose minds are uncultivated, 

 and who have no communication with the rest of the world, I 

 found it next to an impossibility to introduce a single improvement 

 in agriculture, building, or any useful art or science. In any 

 nation, where the art of printing is unknown, and no books are 

 introduced, the higher classes can enjoy but little intellectual 

 pleasure.' 



I sometimes frequented places where the natives had never seen 

 an European, and were ignorant of every thing concerning us : 

 there I beheld manners and customs simple as were those in the 

 patriarchal age ; there, in the very style of Rebecca and the dam- 

 sels of Mesopotamia, the Hindoo villagers treated mc with that 



