The faience tiles of Persia are among its most interesting and beautiful ceramic remains. Most of these tiles date from such Seljuk or Mogul rulers as Malik-Shah (1072), Hulagu Khan (1256), and Ghazan Khan (1295). India has never produced anything like a porcelain. Even pottery of the glazed sort rarely appeared previous to the Mussulman tile products, which tile products were the forerunners of the modern glazed wares fabricated in Multan, Jeypore, and Bombay. However, unglazed pottery has been common throughout India for countless centuries. In speaking of Hindu and Buddhist art Ananda Comaraswamy writes (“The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon”): [Illustration: _Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_ Ewer and Basin Bindri Ware, India, 18th Century Polychrome Persian Tiles, 17th Century] [Illustration: _Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_ Chinese Porcelain of The Kang H’si Period, 1662-1723 Jar, Famille Rose Jar, Blue Hawthorn Vase, Famille Noire Vase, Celadon] I do not forget that in almost every art and craft, as also in music, there exists in Hindustan a complete and friendly fusion of the two cultures. The non-sectarian character of the styles of Indian art has indeed always been conspicuous; so that it is often only by special details that one can distinguish Jain from Buddhist _stupas_, Buddhist from Hindu sculpture, or the Hindu from the Mussulman minor crafts. The one great distinction of Mughal from Hindu art is not so much racial as social; the former is an art of courts and connoisseurs, owing much to individual patronage; the latter belongs as much to the folk as to the kings. The alluring arts of the East are well worth one’s study, well deserving of one’s enthusiasm. Perhaps the illustrations of some of the antiques of Persia and of India here reproduced from photographs of some of the fine examples to be found will awaken an interest in the subject in some who chance upon them. I only hope the world holds more Major Kyttyles of revered memory, and that you, too, may have the good fortune to be brought into communion with such treasures as made the major’s home vie with our conceptions of the palace of Aladdin, treasures which in time brought even the Pickhams to forgive the major his diaphanous-tailed goldfish, to feel no longer the sting of the insignificance of their poor little gilded minnows. CHAPTER XXIX CHINESE PORCELAINS Not to know something of Chinese porcelains, their history and their periods, is to be denied a pleasurable interest. The old porcelains of China are the ancestors of all china-wares of the world, and never have the finest antique fabriques of the Celestial Kingdom been surpassed or even equaled in beauty and texture.