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It has been conjectured that the name of China came to the West by the sea voyage, and is a Malay modification, while the names Seres and Cathayans came overland, and thus caused confusion.
Eastern Macedonia to the north of the line of Seres and Drama and south of the Kingdom of Bulgaria is generally Bulgarian. On the northwest from the city of Uskub up to the confines of Servia and Bosnia, Macedonia is mixed Serb, Bulgarian, and Albanian, with the Serb element preponderating as you travel northward and the Albanian westward.
The beginning of the tables is lost, comprising Portugal, Spain, and the west part of Africa; only the south-east coast of England is inserted. Towards the east, the Seres, the mouth of the Ganges, and the island of Ceylon appear, and routes are traced through the heart of India. Dr.
Silk is mentioned in some very ancient Arabic inscriptions; but down to the reign of the Emperor Justinian was imported into Europe from the country of the Seres, a people of Eastern Asia, supposed to be the Chinese, from, whom it derived its name.
Whatever suspicions may be raised by the garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient writer, who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed from the trees of the Seres or Chinese; and this natural error, less marvellous than the truth, was slowly corrected by the knowledge of a valuable insect, the first artificer of the luxury of nations.
From this it is evident that the Tzenistæ of this author, and the Seres of the ancients, are the same; and in specifying the imports into Ceylon, he mentions silk thread, as coming from countries farther to the east, particularly from the Chinese.
Some persons think the Chinese stole the art from India; certain it was that the inhabitants of Persia, Tyre, and other eastern countries got silk thread from somewhere at a very early date and used it. In fact it was because the Greeks and Romans called the land beyond the Ganges 'Seres' that later the name sericulture became the term applied to silk-raising."
Si vero viciamque seres vilemque faselum ... Haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes; Incipe, et ad medias sementem extende pruinas.
Andrew Clark under the title of Shirburn Ballads. One of the earliest orders of the High Commissioners preserved dates from 1560 and directs the Wardens of the Stationers to stay certain persons from the printing of primers and psalters in English and Latin, for which printing one Seres had obtained a monopoly.
Not those, who drink of the deep Danube, shall now break the Julian edicts: not the Getae, not the Seres, nor the perfidious Persians, nor those born upon the river Tanais.
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