Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.320

c5.320

CARPENTRY. There was, it seems, a heavy demand for workers in wood and carpenters. The superstructure of most of the houses was of wood. And the usual mode of work of the carpenters is graphically described in a story. "They would go up the river in a vessel, and enter the forest, where they would shape beams and planks for householding, and put together the frame-work of one storey or two-storey houses, numbering all the pieces from the mainpost onwards; these then they brought down to the river bank, and put them all aboard; then rowing down stream again, they would build houses to order as it was required of them; after which, when they received their wage, they went back again for more materials for the building and in this way they made their livelihood."⁴ This is the most illuminating instance of a co-operative work witnessed in these stories, and this was true perhaps only of those who lived in their special villages, the vaḍḍhakigāmas, mentioned so frequently,⁵ for there might be individual carpenters also.⁶