Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c15.118

c15.118

Urban Life. Urban life had its own amenities like life in a village. These were offered by a number of institutions of different kinds. Every city had its rest-houses for travellers (*Dharmāvasathas*), its factories where worked its artists (*Śilpī*) and craftsmen, its shops, its vintners (*Śauṇḍikāḥ*), its restaurants offering meals of cooked meat (*pakkvamāṁsa*), rice (*odana*), and cake (*āpūpa*), and its taverns (*pānaśālā*). It had many public amusements like theatrical performances (*prekshā*), music, vocal, and instrumental, exhibition of acting, dancing, jugglery (*chakra-chara*), sorcery (*kuhaka*), storytelling, rhapsody, gymnastics, painting and the like, which were all given by its various classes of artists trained in its Schools of Art maintaned by the State [II. 36; II. 27; IV, 4].