A History of Indian Shipping and Maritime Activity from the Earliest Times c19.4

c19.4

It may also be noted in passing that it was her wonderful achievements in applied chemistry more than her skill in handicraft which enabled India to command for more than a thousand years (from Pliny to Tavernier) the markets of the East as well as the West, and secured to her an easy and universally recognized pre-eminence among the nations of the world in exports and manufactures. Some of the Indian discoveries in chemical arts and manufactures are indicated as early as the 6th century A.D. by Varahamihira in the *Vrihat-Saṅhitā*. Thus he mentions several preparations of cements or powders called Vajralepa, "cements strong as the thunderbolt," for which there was ample use in the temple architecture of the times, whose remains still testify to the adamantine strength of these metal or rock cements. Varāhamihira also alludes to the experts in machinery and the professional experts in the composition of dyes and cosmetics, and even artificial imitations of natural flower-scents which bulked so largely in the Indian exports to Rome. Broadly speaking, there were three great discoveries in applied chemistry to which India owed her capture of the world markets, viz. (1) the preparation of fast dyes for textile fabrics by the treatment of natural dyes like *manjishtha* with alum and other chemicals; (2) the extraction of the principle of indigotin from the indigo plant by a process "which, however crude, is essentially an anticipation of modern chemical methods"; and (3) the tempering of steel "in a manner worthy of advanced metallurgy, a process to which the mediaeval world owed its Damascus swords."¹