CHAPTER I. 
THE HISTORY OF COTTON: FROM ANCIENT INDIA TO 
OUR OWN TIME 
We have no desire whatever to inflict upon the 
long-suffering reader any exhaustive review of the 
uninteresting remarks on cotton which pedantic 
scholars have picked up here and there in ancient 
literature. In fact, the only unpleasant task con- 
nected with the writing of this volume has been the 
enforced reading of several chapters of such mat- 
ter. Be patient then, gentle reader; we shall not 
prolong the agony. 
To find the first use of cotton by our race, we 
shall have to take the road to Mandalay and go 
back to a time five centuries before the birth of 
Christ — back to the dim past in the land of Buddha 
and Brahma? — and Kim; back to the scene of the 
great Mahabharata, and the other legendary 
glories of the dreamy Orient. Before the world 
had known the sway of a Caesar, long even before 
the age of Pericles, the old Hindoo law declared 
that "the sacrificial thread of the Brahman must be 
made of cotton," and as punishment for theft of 
cotton thread directed a fine three times the value of 
the article stolen. 
(13) 
