CHAPTER III BIBLIOGRAPHY UNTIL within a century the casual student of things Oriental has been apt to look upon Asia chiefly as "Bible country," and through a glass of semi-religious colouring has endeavoured to make the things of long ago explain the life of the intervening centuries. Without doubt the tent of Abraham was similar to those which have been used ever since by nomad tribes, and the curtains before it probably resembled the khilims we know so well to-day, but the modern student has added to his research by considering both Christian and Mohammedan ascendency and would not look upon the art product of to-day as revealing in absolute purity the thought life of the Abrahamic period. More or less, to be sure, racial conditions and methods have obtained in spite of changes brought about by the Cross and the Crescent. The ages were not dark ages, in the Orient, that are chronicled as such in the history of Christian Europe, and the influences from the Orient were felt through the Saracenic conquest, and were noticeable in European art antedating the Crusades. The Christian Dark Ages were explained by writers of Sunday-school text-books, as without light, so far as the development of Christian truth was concerned, and all but the bare outlines of Mohammedan supremacy was eliminated. It must be borne in mind that we are speaking of the way historical facts have influenced art, and are not making an argument for or against methods of dealing with religious truths. Formerly, missionaries with eager desire to establish the Cross in foreign lands, wrote in their books of travel more about converts made than about manners and customs. "Idols" were spoken of indiscriminately as such, without according any individuality to either the man or the animal worshipped. Not until religious fervour was accompanied with scholarly research did we receive much valuable assistance from the books of travel written by missionaries. When English interests in the far East developed, the government sent out scholars whose reports were hailed with delight by waiting students, and the monographs published, and the reports in the Asiatic Society journals, were among the earliest literature. that we could claim in the bibliography of the rug. When Mr. Vincent Robinson wrote his earliest papers for the "Journal of the Society of Arts," and the distinguished secretaries of various museums and societies expressed to the world their convictions in regard to objects examined, we began to feel that we had something definite and tangible to take hold of, and we sought for encyclopædic information which might enlighten us in regard to products and their uses in manufacture. From ethnological and consular reports we were able to form a somewhat definite idea of the rug-producing countries and their physical aspects; of highland and lowland, towns and villages, RUG-PLATE IV IRAN RUG Loaned by Mr. James W. Ellsworth AUTHOR'S DESCRIPTION THIS rare old Persian hunting-rug was woven in picture form to serve as a wall decoration. So skilfully has the weaver used nis colours that it is scarcely possible to distinguish floral from animal forms outside the central panel in the field of the rug, as a blush is diffused over all, which mingles the varying shades, and tones them in such a way that the whole effect is of lustre. The seven border stripes are finely woven, and fully four hundred knots are tied in each square inch of the surface. The rug claims two hundred years' existence, which is not too great an age for its beauty of weave to warrant. |