Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c8.19

c8.19

Amongst specialised crafts that of the wood-worker (*Takshā*), metalsmith (*Karmāra*), arrow-smith (*Ishukāra*) and bow-maker (*Dhanushkāra*) and of the potter were important. Music and dancing were also cultivated and as later in the *Jātakas* and Pāṇini they were regarded as *Śilpa*. Indra is addressed as a dancer (*Nritu*); a female dancer was *Nritū*. Both vocal and instrumental music for the Sāman-chants was learnt; a stringed instrument of the lute class (*Viṇā*) and a harp with seven notes (*Sapta-tantrī*, *Saptadhātu Viṇā*, RV. X. 32. 4). There is also mention of a *Śata-tantu* or *Śata-tantrī*, a hundred stringed lyre or harp. These instruments were constuctad on the basis of seven notes or a heptatonic scale of music which has continued since then (*Vedic Index*, I. 283). The consciousness of physical beauty and a regular attempt to create such forms in material media distinguished the aesthetic response of the Vedic people, which became personified as the goddess Śrī-Lakshmī, whose worship continued throughout the later periods.