Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t3.13

c5.t3.13

It is to be regretted that only four of the eighteen crafts (*sippāni*), organized in the form of a union,¹ are specifically mentioned: "the wood-workers (and the masons), the smiths, the leather-workers, the painters and the rest expert in various crafts."² It is difficult to fill up the fourteen unnamed guilds. Probably the number is only conventional, but it does indicate the wide-spread organization of the various crafts. As a matter of fact, the stories reveal a considerably greater number of crafts and occupations as already noticed.³ And out of these, however, only the more important and stable ones are likely to have been organized in the form of a union.