Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/240

 merely lighter and darker shades of the same color. It is thus that the Indian potter maintains inviolate the integrity of form and harmony of coloring, and the perfect unity of purpose and homogeneity of effect of all his work. The mystery of his con- summate work is a dead tradition now : he understands only the application of its process; but not the less must it have been inspired in its origin by the subtlest interpretation of nature. The potter’s art is of the highest antiquity in India, and the un- glazed water vessels, made in every Hindu village, are still thrown from the wheel in the same antique forms represented on the ancient Buddhistic sculptures and paintings. Some of this primi- tive pottery is identical in character with the painted vases found in the tombs of Etruria, dating from about n.C. 1000. I do not suggest any connexion between them ; it is only interesting to find that pottery is still made all over India, for daily use, which is in reality older than the oldest remains we possess of the ceramic art of ancient Greece and Italy. None of the fancy pottery made in India is equal in beauty of form to this primitive village pottery ; and most of it is utterly insignificant and worth- less. The only exception is the gla ed pottery of Madura, and of Sindh and the Panjab, which alone of the fancy varieties can be classed as art pottery, and as such is of the highest excellence.

The Madura pottery [Plate 76] is in the form generally of water bottles, with a globular bowl and long upright neck ; the bowl being generally pierced so as to circulate the air round an inner porous bowl. The outer bowl and neck are rudely fretted all over by notches in the clay, and are glazed either daik green or a rich golden brown.

The glazed pottery of Sindh [Plates 70-75] is made principally at Hala, Hyderabad, Tatta, and Jerruck, and that of the Panjab at Lahore, Multan, Jang, Delhi, and elsewhere. 1 The chief places for the manufacture of encaustic tiles are at Bulri and Saidpur in

1 The master potters known to me by name are Jumii, son of Osman the Potter Karachi; Mahommed Azim, the Pathan, Karachi; Messrs. Nur