History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c13.s2.t4.21

v1.c13.s2.t4.21

The smelting of iron in the past was done only by a special group (caste) of persons in each tribe and they all worshipped the God ‘Asura’. This may be because in the early days of the discovery of this metal it was being used only to make war weapons and hunting tools (refer *Table 2*), and the general public being peace-loving the handling of this metal was considered the work of ‘Asura’ who gave devilish power in the hands of man. The belief of the ancient iron smelters in lord ‘Asura’ has been so strong that his image was put even in the ‘Mandala’ of ancient iron making in Japan (Buddhist period) as can be seen from *Fig. 20* which shows the painting of ‘Kāla Bhairava’ and ‘Asura’ working for the iron smiths (Prakash, B. 1990). In Bihar, Orissa and Eastern part of Karnataka the iron smelting was carried out, by these ‘Asuras’ and in Central India by ‘Āgārias’. Verier (1942) and Joshi (1970) have written in great detail about the ‘Āgāria’ tribe and their iron smelting practice spread through the central province, Rewa, Udaipur, Sirguja, Ranchi and Koraput etc. *Fig. 21* shows the region of India in which according to Verier (1942) Āgārias were smelting iron. In some places they are confused with ‘Lohārs’ or ‘Lohārins’(blacksmiths) but as Verier (1942) has described, while Āgārias smelted the iron ore to produce wrought iron blooms ‘Lohars’ shaped the rough iron to manufacture various tools and objects and carried out suitable heat treatment operations. In the year 1982 Prakash and Igaki (1984) surveyed the district of Bastar where iron making by Mundia tribe was mentioned and they could locate one furnace in the interior of the jungles of ‘Bastar; at Loharpara as reported in their paper.