The poems of the Veda distinguish the rich from the poor. The cultivation of the land is practised and recommended. Corn (_dhana_), barley, beans, and sesame were sown, but the rice of the Ganges valley is unknown. Channels also are mentioned for leading water on the land. Healing herbs are not unknown to the poems, nor the person who is skilled in applying them, the physician. We find in them the desire for health and a long life,[64] blessed with abundance, with sons and daughters. Beautiful garments, precious stones, adorned women with four knots of hair, dancers, wine-houses, and dice are repeatedly mentioned. Weaving and leather-work are known, and also the crafts of the smith, the carpenter, the wheelwright, and the shipbuilder.[65] Among the Aryas of those days more attention must have been given to the breeding of cattle than to the cultivation of the field. A great number of similes and metaphors in the hymns of the Veda show that the Aryas must have lived long with their flocks, and that they stood to them in relations of the closest familiarity. The daughter is the milkmaid (_duhitar_), the consort of the prince is even in later poems the buffalo-cow (_mahishî_), the prince is at times the cow-herd, or protector of cows (_gôpa_), the assembly of the tribe and the fold which encloses the cows are called by the same name (_gôshtha_), and the word expressing a feud (_gavisshthi_) denotes in the first instance the desire for cows. Similes are taken especially from cows and horses. Beside cattle and horses, buffaloes, sheep, and goats are mentioned. The gods are invoked to protect and feed the cows, to increase the herds, to make the cows full of milk, and satisfy the horses, to lead the herds to good pastures, and protect them from misfortune on the way. At the sacrifices parched corn was sprinkled for the horses of the gods.[66]