Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/180

 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.

Among the active and warlike Vedic Aryans the chariot-race was a favourite amusement, as is shown by the very metaphors which are borrowed from this form of sport. Though skilful driving was still a highly esteemed art in the epic period, the use of the chariot both for war and for racing gradually died out in Hindustan, partly perhaps owing to the enervating influence of the climate, and partly to the scarcity of horses, which had to be brought from the region of the Indus.

The chief social recreation of men when they met together was gambling with dice. The irresistible fascination exercised, and the ruin often entailed by this amusement, we have already found described in the Gambler's Lament. Some haunted the gaming-hall to such an extent that we find them jocularly described in the Yajurveda as "pillars of the playhouse" (sabhā-sthāṇu). No certain information can be gathered from