was most in contact with the nomad tribes of Central Asia, through whose hands silk first reached the western nations.
(Hirth, Ancient History of China, 9, 22–3, 117, 121–2).
The antiquity of the silk industry in India is uncertain, but the weight of evidence seems to be in favor of its importation from China, by way of the Brahmaputra valley, Assam and Eastern Bengal, early in the Christian era; while the cultivation of native varieties, not feeding on mulberry leaves—the Saturnidae, including Antheraea paphia (the modern tasar silk); Antheraea assama (feeding on laurel species principally), and Attacus ricini (feeding on the castor-oil plant) were probably all stimulated by the value of the Bombyx silk.
(See Watt, pp. 992–1026; Cambridge Natural History, VI, 375.)
The trade in silk yarn and silk cloth existed in Northern India soon after the Aryan invasion. Silk is mentioned several times, as gifts from foreign countries, in the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyana, and the Institutes of Manu; and it may be assumed that some trade at least went farther west. The Egyptian records do not mention it prior to the Persian conquest, and it was, no doubt, through the empires of Darius and Xerxes that it first reached the Mediterranean world.
The Hebrew scriptures contain at least two references to silk: the dmeshek of Amos III, 12 seems to be the Arabic dimaks, English damask, a silken fabric; while meshi in Ezekiel XVI, 10 seems to mean a silken gauze. Isaiah also (XLIX, 12) mentions the Sinim in a manner indicating extreme distance.
It has been supposed that the Greeks learned of silk through Alexander's expedition, but it probably reached them previously through Persia. Aristotle (Hist. Anim., V, xix, 11) gives a reasonably correct account: "It is a great worm which has horns and so differs from others. At its first metamorphosis it produces a caterpillar, then a bombylius, and lastly a chrysalis—all these changes taking place within six months. From this animal women separate and reel off the cocoons and afterwards spin them. It is said that this was first spun in the island of Cos by Pamphile, daughter of Plates." This indicates a steady importation of raw silk on bobbins before Aristotle's time. The fabric he mentions was the famous Coa vestis, or transparent gauze (woven also at Tyre and elsewhere in Syria), which came into favor in the time of Caesar and Augustus. Pliny mentions Pamphile of Cos, “who discovered the art of unwinding the silk” (from the bobbins, not from the cocoons) “and spinning a tissue therefrom; indeed, she ought not to be deprived of the glory of having discovered the art of making garments which, while they cover a woman, at the same time reveal her naked charms.” (XI, 26).
