Occupations of Ancient India
Weaving was so well-known that numerous poetical metaphors were drawn from this industry.
From: 2000 B.C.E. To: 500 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Other Occupations of the People,” from Life in Ancient India by P.T. Srinivas Iyengar, 1912.
Weaving in cotton and wool was done by men and women. The garment a bridegroom had to wear on the day of marriage was woven by the bride herself with beautiful borders and given to him.
Weaving was so well-known that numerous poetical metaphors were drawn from this industry. “The wives of the gods wove a hymn to Indra.” “The sacrifice drawn out with threads on every side, stretched by a hundred sacred ministers and one, this do these fathers weave who hitherward are come; they sit beside the warp and cry, weave forth, weave back. The man extends it and the man unbinds it: even to this vault of heaven hath he outspun it. These pegs are fastened to the seat of worship; they made the sama hymns their weaving shuttles.” “I know not the warp and the woof I know not.”
Rats, the enemies of weaver, give rise to a simile, “Biting cares devour me, as rats devour the weaver’s threads.”
Carpenters made chariots and carts. The chariots were not primitive ones, but had wheels with naves, spokes, and fellies. The linch-pin is mentioned as the emblem of stability. Wood-work included wood-carving. The gods are compared to the forms “well made by an artizan with a knife,” and decorated bowls are referred to.
The carpenters were “skilled craftsmen” and to their art is frequently compared the skill shown by poets in the composition of hymns. “Men have fabricated this hymn as a skilful workman fashions a car.” “Brihaspati brought it forth like a bowl from out the timber.” A poet claims to be able to bend Indra with his song, “as bends a wright his wheel of solid wood.”
Another interesting image derived from the work of the carpenter is found in R.V.i.105.18. “A ruddy wolf beheld me once, as I was faring on my path. He, like a carpenter whose back is aching, crouched and slunk away.”
Boats and ships are frequently referred to and the art of ship-building was so well-known that the sacrificial rite is compared to ship-building.
Houses were mostly of wood and were put up by carpenters, who with their mallets made household utensils, ladles, cups, buckets, bowls, etc. of wood.
Blacksmiths made spears, swords, hatchets, quoits, lances, axes, quivers, knives for various purposes, including razors, helmets, coats of mail, sickles, ploughshares, pots, needles, hatchets for felling trees, hooks for shaking fruits off trees, iron legs for those who had lost their natural ones, iron-forts, i.e. wooden stockades iron-sheathed. They tipped with iron arrows winged with feathers and furnished with poisoned tips.
Goldsmiths melted gold and fashioned bright jewels such as necklets, probably garlands of flat circular pieces of gold, corresponding to the wreaths of gold coins now worn, armlets, anklets, chains, and ornaments for the breast. They made water ewers of gold and images of kings. The smith sought “after the man who possessed plenty of gold, with well-dried wood, with anvil and bellows to kindle the flame.”Brahmanaspati is said to have “blown forth” the birth of gods, like a blacksmith.
Silver is rarely mentioned, but gold very frequently. Next to gold, the word ayas is often referred to; and since both it and gold are mentioned, we may infer that smiths worked in copper too, a conclusion strengthened by the fact that copper is a holy metal even today, and copper vessels alone are allowed to be used for holding consecrated water in all ceremonial. The metal bowls were probably of bronze. Tin is also mentioned and lead much used in sorcery.
Workers in leather made casks for holding liquor, shields of bullock’s hide, leather-guards for the hands of the archer, drums formed of wood and bound with straps of leather.
Iyengar, P.T. Srinivas. Life in Ancient India. Srinivasa Varadachari, 1912.
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