stories of the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_ are told nightly all over India to listening millions. Let us suppose the village-festival is approaching its close. Then "a reverend Brahman steps upon the scene with the familiar bundle of inscribed palm-leaves in his hands, and, sitting down and opening them one by one upon his lap, slow and lowly begins his antique chant, and late into the starry night holds his hearers, young and old, spellbound by the story of the pure loves of Rama and Sita, or of Draupadi who too dearly loved the bright Arjuna, and the doom of the froward sons of Dhritarashtra." [Illustration: COPPER-GILT SACRIFICIAL VASE: MADURA.] Can we wonder, then, that from these legends of the heroic age are taken figures for the sculptor, scenes for the carver and the graver, and subjects for the jeweller and the worker in ivory? Religion is thus the greater conservator of Indian art as it appeared in its earlier forms, and reduces into conformity with it all that comes from abroad. Further agencies toward the same end are the caste-system, in the large cities trade-guilds--or, as we would call them, trades unions--and, finally, hereditary offices in both village and city. Under the village-system artisans may be said to have undergone successive generations of training, and the result is that in a country where _manufacture_ means, literally, "making by hand," any object of industrial art represents the development of hereditary skill. His craftsmanship is the father's richest legacy to his son.