The antiquity claimed for the Hindoos as a people cannot, unfortunately, be elucidated either by the help of such chronicles as the granite records of Egypt, the terra-cotta tablets of Babylon, or the writings of China. The history of Indian art has been surrounded by a more or less impenetrable mystery. Two questions accordingly arise as to its ceramic productions: firstly, Did India possess any knowledge of the plastic art? secondly--that question having been answered in the affirmative--Was it original or borrowed? These doubts, in all probability, arose from the success of the Brahminical endeavors to invest every branch of Hindoo knowledge with a veil of secrecy, and from the geographical position of Hindostan. Occupying a peninsula about half-way on the route by sea between Eastern and Western Asia, Africa, and Europe, it became the recognized mart for the exchange of mercantile commodities. European traders found in it a convenient halting-place, even before they fully realized its actual commercial importance. Similarly, on the north, it intercepted a portion of the overland traffic, and ultimately became the centre toward which gravitated the productions of Persia and Arabia on the west, and of China and Japan on the east. Travellers who did not stop to examine things very closely, accordingly declared India a stranger to ceramic art. Recognizing its importance as an exchange, from the abundance of imports from abroad, they did not pierce the commercial conditions which hid its productiveness and originality. Later researches have shown not only that India was not dependent upon other countries, but that it had developed an exceptional skill in the application of porcelain to the embellishment of architecture. As if completely to subvert the statements of the first visitors to Hindostan, China, the great seat of the porcelain manufacture, has acknowledged its indebtedness to that country, and the extent to which it has imitated its styles. There is no reason for supposing that a country which had early shown a wonderful capacity for reaching the highest forms of architectural magnificence, and for executing work of the nicest delicacy in the precious metals and gems, lent to China alone its ideas of ceramic beauty. The absence of thorough investigation on the one hand, and the presence of a tendency to take refuge in secrecy in regard to both methods and results, rather than to court observation on the other, may, however, have had their effect in lessening the influence India might otherwise have exercised on the art. That she borrowed and adapted styles originating in both Persia and Japan, after her marts had been flooded with imports from these countries, there is every reason for believing, even when she preserved styles sufficiently distinctive to enable us to distinguish the foreign from the native work.