Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/378

 Mr. Ralph Fitch, an English traveller, in 1583, spoke of the same place when he said—"Sinnergan is a town six leagues from Serrapore, where there is the best and finest cloth made of cotton that is in all India ." Mr. Hamilton says—"Soonergong is now dwindled down to an inconsiderable village. By Abul Fazel, in 1582, it is celebrated for the manufacture of a beautiful cloth, named cassas (cossaes,) and the fabrics it still produces justify to the present generation its ancient renown ". But it seems that there has been a great decline in the manufacture of the finest muslins, which is both stated and accounted for by Mr. Hamilton in the following passage on the district of Dacca Jelulpoor:—

"Plain muslins, are distinguished by different names, according to the fineness or closeness of the texture, as well as flowered, striped, or chequered muslins, are fabricated chiefly in this district, where a species of cotton named the banga grows, necessary, although not of a very superior quality, to form the stripes of the finest muslins, for which the city of Dacca has been so long celebrated. The northern parts of Benares furnish both plain and flowered muslins, which are not ill adapted for common use, though incapable of sustaining any competition with the beautiful and inimitable fabrics of Dacca.

"The export of the above staple articles has much decreased, and the art of manufacturing some of the finest species of muslins is in danger of being lost, the orders for them being so few that many of the families who possess by hereditary instruction the art of fabricating them have desisted, on account of the difficulty they afterwards experience in disposing of them. This decline may partly be accounted for from the utter stagnation of demand in the upper provinces since the downfall of the imperial government, prior to which these delicate and beautiful fabrics were in such estimation, not only at the court of Delhi, but among all classes of the high nobility in India, as to render it difficult to supply the demand. Among more re-*