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A people so acutely observant of natural objects and capable of keen relish of their beauty would naturally deal largely in descriptions of feminine charms; of numerous references to this subject—I shall quote but one:—The songstress had hair like the black sand on the sea-shore; her fair forehead was like the crescent moon, her eye-brow bent like the bow that kills; the outer end of her cool eyes was beautiful, her sweetly speaking mouth was red like the sheath of the fruit of the silk cotton tree; her spotlessly white teeth were like rows of many pearls; her ears were like the curved handles of scissors and their lobes were shaking with bright ear rings shaped like the crocodile. Her neck was bent down with modesty; her shoulders were like the waving bamboo trees; her forearms were covered with thin hair; her fingers were like the November flower which grows on the tops of high hills; her brightly shining nails, like the mouth of a parrot. Her breasts, covered with light coloured beauty spots, were such as people thought that it would cause her pain to bear them, and were so high that the rib of a cocoanut leaf could not go between them; her navel was very beautiful and resembled a whirl-pool in water. Her waist was so small that observers could not guess that it existed (and that it bore the weight of the body) with difficulty. Her pudendum was adorned with a mēgalai, many stringed waist band with many bells, looking as if it swarmed with bees; her thighs, straight and thin like the trunk of a female elephant; her lower legs were covered with hair, as it ought to be, up to the ankles, and her small feet were like the tongue of a tired dog.

Carpentry began and was well developed in the Stone Age; for all sorts of carpenter's tools have been picked up from the settlements of the lithic epoch. Most of these tools were made of iron when the Iron Age succeeded. The workers in wood was called tachchar or yāṇar. Carpenters had a greater variety of work to do than in modern days, for besides making the wooden furniture and utensils in