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The Jaina Canon and Early Indian-Court Life
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With even greater pride may he be seen some other time, listening to the announcement of the birth of a son, and distributing gifts with lavish liberality. We hear him order his officials to release all prisoners, to sprinkle the whole town with scented water, sweep and plaster the streets, and decorate them with arches and banners, to erect shamianas so that the populace may watch the joyous celebrations, to whitewash all the buildings, cover their walls with auspicious hand-prints of sandal-paste, garland them with flowers, strew flowers everywhere, and perfume the air with frankincense and olibanum. Then musicians and singers, dancers and acrobats, wrestlers and jesters, all are ordered to display their art, the populace is to be free from taxes, and there is to be rejoicing and happiness everywhere. Thus he celebrates the event for ten days, and goes about wearing his costliest robes and most precious ornaments.
Again, a royal person may be watched negotiating with the masters of the guild of goldsmiths, who receive orders of the strangest import. Painters are instructed to decorate the walls of some private room with representations of dallying beauties and love-scenes. Wealthy merchants, coming from far over the sea, full of accounts of strange adventures, are received in audience, and curious and valuable gifts graciously accepted. More than once may we see the skilful and successful lavishly rewarded, the unskilled scorned and punished with exile at the hands of a discriminating and high-spirited ruler, the sphere of whose interests seems to have no bournes. On the battle-field too we may watch him, clearly distinguish his curiously equipped army, gaze on old-fashioned weapons, that might well have served as models to the painters of Ajantā and wonder at the stratagems of ancient warfare.
Apart from all such occasional glimpses, we even learn in detail how a king of antiquity begins his day and starts the series of his various activities. The small hours of the morning find him on his bed, peacefully slumbering. Only when the sun comes forth, red like the Aśoka blossom, he rises and straight away begins a good
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