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Social Conditions
They were floored or faced with brick, stone, or wood, and had walls or steps of the same material. To prevent water becoming stale, pipes were laid to drain it off. There were also arrangements for hot-bath rooms with chimney and fireplace, and the roof covered with skins. The bathers put scented clay over their faces and took their bath seated on stools. There were cells to be used as cooling rooms after the steam bath.1 The Brahmajala Sutta contains a stock list of dress-andtoilet processes comprising no less than twenty items. Of these items, Pāņini3 refers to mirror, collyrium, garlands, perfumes, shoes, and staff.
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FURNITURE AND UTENSILS
The progress of civilization during this period brought with it certain amenities, such as furniture and utensils, to make life easy and the homes comfortable. The Vinaya Texts1 give a long list of the articles of furniture and utensils. There was a pretty large variety of chairs rectangular, cushioned, cane-bottomed, straw-bottomed arm-chair and state chair, and sofas with or without arms. There were also different types of bedsteads with legs carved to represent animals' feet. Some bedsteads had lofty supports with arrangements for rocking backwards and forwards, and the bed, comprising mattresses stuffed with cotton and pillows half the size of man's body, was strewn over with flowers. Bolsters stuffed with wool, cotton cloth, bark, grass or talipot leaves, and chairs and bedsteads covered with upholstered cushions to fit them were in use. For poorer people, there were mats made of grass and bedsteads made of laths of split bamboo.
For reclining their bodies people used lofty and large things such as large cushions, divans, coverlets with long fleece counterpanes of many colours, woollen coverlets, white or marked with thick flowers, mattresses, cotton coverlets dyed with figures of animals, ruga with long hair on one or both sides, carpets inwrought with gold or with silk, large woollen
1. Che. V. 14.
2. G. P. MAJUMDAR, Toilet, Ind. Culture, Vol, I. p. 651.
3. Pa, V. 2.6; IV. 9-9; vi. 3. 65; IV. 4.53-54; V. 1. 110; V. 1. 14. 4. Chr, Sixth Khandhaka.
