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BUDDHIST INDIA
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from other passages that the King's list is far from exhaustive. There is mention, in other documents of the same age, of guilds of work-people; and the number of these guilds is often given afterwards as eighteen. Four of these are mentioned by name.' But a list of the whole eighteen has unfortunately not yet been found. It would probably have included the following:
1. The workers in wood. They were not only carpenters and cabinet-makers, but also wheelwrights; and the builders of houses, and of ships, and of vehicles of all sorts (863).
2. The workers in metal. They made any iron implements weapons of all kinds, ploughshares, axes, hoes, saws, and knives. But they also did finer work-made needles, for instance, of great lightness and sharpness, or gold and (less often) silver work of great delicacy and beauty (864).
3. The workers in stone. They made flights of steps, leading up into a house or down into a reservoir; faced the reservoir; laid foundations for the woodwork of which the upper part of the houses was built; carved pillars and bas-reliefs; and even did finer work such as making a crystal bowl, or a stone coffer (864). Beautiful examples of these two last were found in the Sākiya Tope.
4. The weavers. They not only made the cloths which the people wrapped round themselves as dress, but manufactured fine muslin for export, and worked costly and dainty fabrics of silk cloth and fur into rugs, blankets, coverlets, and carpets.2
At Jat. 6. 427.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
2 D. I. 7.
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