The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.220.4

v1.c10.220.4

Nor is this remarkable, considering the celebrity which India has enjoyed from remote antiquity for the excellence of her ornaments. Adverting to it, Mr. Maskelyne, in his *Report* [ 98 ] *on Jewellery and Precious Stones in the French Exhibition of 1866* (class XXXVI), says: "It is said that even that delicate and most sensitive instrument of touch, the hand of the Hindu, is not sufficiently sensitive for fashioning the finest sorts of Indian filigree, and the children alone are employed in the manipulation of such a spider-web of wire. Of fabrics so delicate, nothing is to be seen among the jewellery at Paris, indeed the best of the Indian filigree, and that by no means worthy of its source, is to be found among the articles exhibited under the goldsmith's class. It is to be remarked of this elegant and primitive, perhaps very earliest form of ornament in precious metal, that it had probably reached its limits for delicacy and design at a very archaic period, and has made no real progress in recent times; that, in fact, the early Greek filigraner worked with as much facility and delicacy as the Hindu artisan of our day, who inherits the skill and the methods he uses by the direct descent of an immemorial tradition.