The Hindu jewellery often is imitations of the flowers of the Michelia champaca, Acacia Arabica, Chrysanthemum, Phyllanthus emblica, Elmagnus koluga, and Mangifera Indica. The bell-shaped ear-ring is from the flower of the sacred lotus, and the cone-shaped of Kashmir, in ruddy gold, repre sents the lotus flower-bed. The lotus is seen everywhere in Indian, Chinese, and Japanese decoration, and on Assyrian and Babylonian sculptures.
A chopped gold form of jewellery worn throughout India is made of pieces like jujubes, of the purest gold, fiat or in tubes, and, by removal of the angles and octahedrons, strung on red silk. It is the finest archaic jewellery in India. Ear rings of the nail-head pattern are like those repre sented on Assyrian sculptures.
Necklaces in Western India are often of gold, in form like clubs and knots of grass. Burmese necklaces are tubular beads of ruddy gold strung together, and pendent from a chain that goes round the neck, from which the strings of tubular beads of gold hang. down the neck like a golden veil. The gold is sometimes wrought into flowers. The eastern jewellers' art is employed for children of the earliest ages, as rings, anklets, etc.
Hindu girls have as their sole covering a silver leaf, of the shape of the pipal leaf, sometimes suspended from the waist by a thread, but gener ally by a girdle of twisted silver with a serpent's head, where it fastens in front. In Algeria, girls wear a leaf-shaped silver ornament ; and through the Barbary States (Berber) it is the emblem of virginity.
With the ancient Egyptians, the lotus and pa pyrus were types of ornament, and the Greeks adopted the date tree for their pillars.
Imitations of knotted grass and of leaves seem to be the origin of the simplest and most common form of gold ornament, the early specimens consisting of thick gold wire twisted into bracelets, etc. A second archaic type of decoration is to be found in the chopped gold jewellery of Gujerat. This is made of gold lumps, either solid or hollow, in the forms of cubes and octahedrons, strung together on red silk.
The finest gemmed and enamelled jewellery in India is that of Kashmir and the Panjab, and which extends across Rajputana to Dehli and Central India. It consists of tires, aigrettes, and other ornaments for the head ; also ear-rings, ear-chains, and studs of the chrysanthemum flower, nose rings, nose studs, necklaces, some of chains of pearls and precious stones, others of tablets of gold set with gems, strumg together by short strings of mixed pearls and turquoises; armlets, bracelets, rings, anklets, and rosaries, in never ending variations of form, and of the richest and loveliest effects in pearl, turquoise, enamel, ruby, diamond, sapphire, topaz, and emerald. Like the
Assyrian sculpture, the bracelets often end with the head of some beast.
Goldsmiths of India generally stain their work of a deep yellow. In Sind, the goldsmiths and jewellers sometimes give it a highly artistic tinge of olive-brown. The Sind goldsmiths' work is very beautiful, and of purely indigenous design. In Kashmir and in Burma their work is in ruddy gold.
Throughout Southern India, a favourite design with the British consists of figures of Hindu deities in high relief, either beaten out from the surface, or fixed on to it by solder or screws. The Trichi nopoly work proper includes also chains of rose gold, and bracelets of the flexible serpent pattern. The silver filigree work of Cuttack, identical in character with that of ancient Greece, and of Malta at the present day, is generally done' by boys, whose sensitive fingers and keen sight enable them to put the fine silver threads together with the necessary rapidity and accuracy. The gold smiths' work of Kashmir is of the kind known as parcel-gilt, and is further distinguished by the ruddy colour of the gold used. Its airy shapes and exquisite tracery, graven through the gilding to the dead-white silver below, softening the lustre of the gold to a pearly radiance, give a most charming effect to this refined and graceful work. The hammered repoussd silver work of Cutch (Kachchh), although now entirely naturalized, is said to be of Dutch origin. • Similar work is done at Lncknow and Dacca.
In many of the towns of India, the scarlet and black seeds of the Abrus precatorius (gunch), the flat black seeds of the Cassia auriculata (tarwar), the red seeds of the Adenanthcra pavonina, the mottled seeds of the Areca catechu, the oval seeds of the Caryota urens, and the seeds of the Ehco carpus ganitrus, set in gold and silver, are all used for personal ornaments.