Page 320 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

CHAPTER XII.
TiixTiLEs : Woven Silks, Embroidery, Carpets.

The word " textile," under its widest acceptation, means every
kind of stuff, no matter its material, wrought in the loom. Silk is
by far the most important material used in China, where the pro-
duction of many wild silkworms is used, in addition to that of the
common mulberry-feeding species, the Bombyx mori, the care of
which is considered the special duty of every Chinese woman. The
art of sericulture originated in China, and its origin is traced back
by the Chinese to the most ancient times. The empress Hsi Ling
Shih, wife of Huang Ti, is said to have introduced the art of rearing
silkworms in the third millennium before our era, and the inven-
tion of the loom is generally attributed to her. She was deified
with an appropriate title, and is still worshipped by the empress
to-day at an annual ceremony during which mulberry leaves are
picked as a chief part of the ritual. While the emperor ploughs a
furrow in spring as the first agriculturist of his country, the empress
offers mulberry leaves at the altar with her own hands to encourage
sericulture.
Silk was first brought to Europe overland, and the earliest name
by which China became known to the west was derived from it.
Silk in Chinese is ssfi, in Corean sir ; to the ancient Greeks it became
known as (jl\p, the nation whence it came was to them, Sr/pt? and
the fibre itself a^piKnv, hence the Latin sericum, and the English
silk. We owe to Aristotle the first notice of the silkworm ; the
raw silk imported appears to have been first woven in the west into