The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.156

v1.c17.156

Little change can be traced in the social life of the time. The use of houses of wood continued; and, as a result, we have not a single relic remaining of the architecture of the period. Nor have we any coins: it is not probable, indeed, that a regular coinage had begun, though the path to this development was already opened by the use of the *kṛishṇala*, the berry of the *Abrus precatorius*, as a unit of weight. We hear in the Brāhmaṇas of the *çatamāna*, a piece of gold in weight equivalent to a hundred *kṛishṇalas*, and such pieces of gold were clearly more or less equivalent to currency and must have been used freely by the merchants, of whose activities we hear so little in the sacred texts. The *nishka*, originally a gold ornament, was also at this time a unit of value; and the cow as a unit was probably in course of supersession. The style of clothing seems to have continued unchanged, though we hear more of the details: among other things we are told of woollen garments, robes dyed with saffron, and silk raiment. The food of the Indian remained unaltered: the eating of meat is, indeed, here and there censured, as for instance in a hymn of the Atharvaveda where meat eating is classed with the drinking of the *surā* as a sinful act, and meat might be avoided like other things by one who was keeping a vow. But it was still the custom to slay a great ox or goat for the entertainment of a guest, and the great sage Yājñavalkya ate meat of milch cows and oxen, provided that the flesh was *aṃsala*, a word of doubtful import, rendered either ‘firm’ or ‘tender’ by various authorities. The doctrine of *ahiṃsā*, which forbids the doing of injury to any animal, was indeed only in embryo in this period, and was not fully developed until the growth of the belief in transmigration came to strengthen the philosophic tenets of the Brāhmaṇas as to the unity of all existence. The amusements of the day were, as in the period of the Rigveda, the chariot race, dicing, of which we have several elaborate but not very clear accounts, and dancing. The term Çailūsha appears in the list of victims at the human sacrifice, and the sense ‘actor’ has been seen in it. Taken in conjunction with the dozen or so of hymns which show a dialogue form it has been supposed to indicate that the Rigveda knew of a ritual drama, the direct precursor of the drama of later India. But the evidence adduced is insufficient to bear the strain of the hypothesis¹.