Page:The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana.djvu/40

14 1. Making parrots, flowers, tufts, tassels, bunches, bosses, knobs, etc., out of yarn or thread.

2. Solution of riddles, enigmas, covert speeches, verbal puzzles, and enigmatical questions.

3. A game, which consisted in repeating verses, and as one person finished, another person had to commence at once, repeating another verse, beginning with the same letter with which the last speaker’s verse ended, whoever failed to repeat, was considered to have lost and to be subject to pay a forfeit or stake of some kind.

4. The art of mimicry or imitation.

5. Reading, including chanting and intoning.

6. Study of sentences difficult to pronounce. It is played as a game chiefly by women and children, and consists of a difficult sentence being given, and when repeated quickly, the words are often transposed or badly pronounced.

7. Practice with sword, single stick, quarter staff, and bow and arrow.

8. Drawing inferences, reasoning or infering.

9. Carpentry, or the work of a carpenter.

10. Architecture, or the art of building.

11. Knowledge about gold and silver coins, and jewels and gems.

12. Chemistry and mineralogy.

13. Coloring jewels, gems and beads.

14. Knowledge of mines and quarries.

15. Gardening; knowledge of treating the diseases of trees and plants, of nourishing them, and determining their ages.

16. Art of cock fighting, quail fighting, and ram fighting.

17. Art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak.

18. Art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of dressing the hair with unguents and perfumes and braiding it.

19. The art of understanding writing in cypher and the writing of words in a peculiar way.

20. The art of speaking by changing the forms of words. It is of various kinds. Some speak by changing the beginning and end of words, others by adding unnecessary letters between every syllable of a word, and so on.

21. Knowledge of languages and of the vernacular dialects.

22. Art of making flower carriages.

23. Art of framing mystical diagrams, of addressing spells and charms, and binding armlets.