Page 13 - Chiense TExtiles, MET MUSEUM Pub 1934

CHINESE TEXTILES
in accuracy. The result is that the Westerner, with his
passion for dates and cataloguing, is in for a long period
of sifting the material and testing the statements which
have been made, before he gets anything like a complete
survey of Chinese textiles. Certain things we do know
and we know how to go about finding out others, but it
is well to go gingerly.
The invention of clothing is ascribed to the legendary
period in Chinese history called the Period of the Five
Kings, and the discovery o( silk is accorded to the Em-
press Lei Tsu, also known as Hsi-ling-shih, who was the
wife of Huang Ti, the third of the Five Emperors. As
the patroness of silkworms she is still worshiped in
China and up to the time of the Revolution was recog-
nized by the state in an annual sacrifice by the reigning
empress, at a special altar, the Hsien Tsan T'an, which
stands in an inclosure at the northeastern part of the
Pei Hai (the most northerly of the "Three Seas," the
artificial lakes which, with their palaces, temples, and
gardens, supplement the Forbidden City). This sacrifice
was made in the Third Moon at the same time that the
emperor was conducting the sacrifices at the great Altar
of Agriculture, which lies inside the south gate of the
city of Peking, across from the Temple of Heaven.
While Lei Tsu makes a proper and charming patroness
of silk, it seems likely that silk did not come into much
use until the Chou dynasty. In the Memoires concernant
1
l' histoire ... des C hinois we find the statement:
1 Quoted in Werner, Descriptive Sociology, vol. IX, p. 268.
3