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Rh the business to be interrupted. The only other occasions on which he left the palace were when he performed sacrifices or went out for the chase. Crowds of women surrounded him when he went out for the chase, and outside this circle the spearmen were ranged. Armed women attended the king in chariots, on horses, or on elephants, when he hunted in the open grounds from the back of an elephant. Sometimes he shot arrows from a platform inside an enclosure, and two or three armed women stood by him on the platform. These accounts show that the sturdy and warlike manners of the Kurus and the Panchalas of the Epic Age had already been replaced by more luxurious and effeminate habits in the Philosophic Age. The age of chivalry had gone, and that of luxury had come.

Arrian gives an account of the way in which the Hindus equipped themselves for war: "The foot-soldiers carry a bow made of equal length with the man who bears it. This they rest upon the ground, and pressing against it with their left foot, thus discharge the arrow, having drawn the string far backwards; for the shaft they use is little short of being three yards long, and there is nothing which can resist an Indian archer's shot—neither shield nor breastplate, nor any stronger defence, if such there be. In their left hand they carry bucklers made of undressed ox-hide, which are not so broad as those who carry them, but are about as long. Some are equipped with javelins instead of bows, but wear a sword, which is broad in the blade, but not longer