Part 6 - Handicrafts of the Vārāṇasī region

From period II manufacturing bone articles grew as another important industry. Abundance of bones made it a very common industry of the Gaṅgā plains. Primarily tools of various types and also dice, comb, disc were made. Bone points were closely associated with the NBP phase of the Gaṅgā plains. From Rajghat alone fifty bone points were reported. These were of four types-double ended points, tanged specimens, socketed points, socketed and barbed. These were used for hunting and shooting. All these point to a flourishing industry. In the early phase of period III the bone industry continued to be in a good state. Bone tools of different shapes and sizes were reported. But in the late phase it faced a quick decline. Standard and number of tools depreciated. Probably the bone tools lost their relevance and rather than tools bones were used to make household staffs like comb, disc, handle etc.

From the Jātakas we learn of a specialized ivory industry existed at Vārāṇasī. There was an exclusive ivory worker’s street at the suburb of Vārāṇasī. A Jātaka tale describes there was a network of foresters who collected the elephant tusk and brought it to ivory worker’s quarter. Generally tusk of a dead elephant was collected but tusk of a living elephant was much more valuable than that of dead ones. At the ivory worker’s settlement they gave desired shape to the raw elephant tusk. That involved a specialization and expertise that the Vārāṇasī craftsmen possessed.^[1]

Main source of ivory was the dense monsoonal forest of the upper Gaṅgā plain. Even in the Sīlavanāga Jātaka too, the elephant whose teeth were taken by the forester resided in the Himalayan region. Among the ivory items dice and bead were reported from period II of Vārāṇasī. The industry continued to be in a flourishing condition even in the next period and attained a greater height. Ornaments, beads, luxury items came to be made of ivory from the beginning of the Christian era and continued to be so in the early centuries of the Christian era.

Jātakas also furnished that carpenter’s village having an exclusive carpenter population of five hundred was located near Vārāṇasī. The Jātaka clearly states that the carpenters entered the forest to collect timber and shaped them into beams and planks for house building, made the framework of one or two storey houses and they transported these materials by the river route and this is how they earned their livelihood. This picture showed that a network of wood collection and wood craft grew in this time around Vārāṇasī.^[2] This literary evidence is well comparable to the actual evidences of wood craft found at the rampart of Vārāṇasī. The wooden planks with post holes found on the riverside portion of the rampart proved carpenter’s activities.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

B.P. Singh, op. cit. pp. 221, 231-32.

[2]:

The Jātaka or Stories of The Buddha’s Former Births, Vol.1, no.72, Sīlavanāga Jātaka, translated from the Pali by Robert Chalmers, Edited by E.B. Cowell, Delhi, Motilal Banarasidass Publishers Private Limited, 1990, pp.174-77.