Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/103

 middle of the sixth century, together with subsequent wars, had greatly interrupted the caravan trade between China and Persia. On the return of peace, the Sogdians, an Asiatic people, who had the greatest interest in the revival of the trade, persuaded the Turkish sovereign, whose subjects they were become, to send an embassy to Chosroes, king of Persia, to open a negotiation for this purpose. Maniak, a Sogdian prince, who was ambassador, being instructed to request that the Sogdians might be allowed to supply the Persians with silk; presented himself before the Persian monarch in the double character of merchant and envoy, carrying with him many bales of silken merchandise, for which he hoped to find purchasers among the Persians. But Chosroes, who thought the conveyance by sea to the Persian Gulf more advantageous to his subjects than this proposed traffic, was not disposed to lend a favorable ear to the legation, and rather uncourteously showed his contempt for the Sogdian traders. He bought up all the silk which the ambassador had carried with him, and immediately burned it before them; thus giving the most convincing proof of the little value which it had in his estimation.

After this the Persians and Chinese united against the Turks, who, to strengthen themselves, sought an alliance with the Emperor Justin. Maniak was again appointed ambassador, and sent to negotiate the terms of the alliance; but disappointment, though from a dissimilar cause, attended this his second embassy. The sight of silk-worms, and the establishment for manufacturing their produce, in Constantinople, were to him as unwelcome as unexpected; he however concealed his mortification, and, with perhaps an overstrained civility, acknowledged, that the Romans were already become as expert as the Chinese in both the management of silk-worms and manufacture of their silk ; and when in the fourth year of Justin II. (i. e. A. D. 569.) they went on the same mission to Byzantium, they found that here also there was no demand, since silk-worms were bred there already. Soon after this we learn· that the Byzantines sent an embassy to Disabul, King of the Sogdiani, who