A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.63

c9.63

Though the requirements of life in early Vedic times were still primitive enough to enable every man more or less to supply his own wants, the beginnings of various trades and industries can be clearly traced in the *Rigveda*. References are particularly frequent to the labour of the worker in wood, who was still carpenter, joiner, and wheelwright in one. As the construction of chariots and carts required peculiar skill, we find that certain men already devoted themselves to it as a special art, and worked at it for pay. Hence felicity in the composition of hymns is often compared with the dexterity of the wheelwright. Mention is also sometimes made of the smith who smelts the ore in a forge, using the wing of a bird instead of a bellows to produce a draught. He is described as making kettles as well as other domestic utensils of metal. The *Rigveda* also refers to tanners and the skins of animals prepared by them. Women, it appears, were acquainted with sewing and with the plaiting of mats from grass or reeds. An art much more frequently alluded to in metaphors and similes is that of weaving, but the references are so brief that we obtain no insight into the process. The *Atharva-veda*, however, gives some details in a passage which describes how Night and Day, personified as two sisters, weave the web of the year alternately with threads that never break or come to an end. The division of labour had been greatly developed by the time of the *White Yajurveda*, in which a great many trades and vocations are enumerated. Among these we find the rope-maker, the jeweller, the elephant-keeper, and the actor.