History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c24.s1.37

v1.c24.s1.37

The most vital question about the plough is when did the iron ploughshare replace the primitive wooden ones. The use of iron ploughshares presupposes a fair knowledge of iron. Scholars differ on the question of the knowledge of iron in the Vedic literature. The exact metal denoted by the term ayas is not certain. In the list of six metals in the Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā (XVIII.13) loha (red) and śyāmam (swarthy) respectively signify copper and iron, and hence ayas would stand for bronze. Ayas (bronze or copper) was the metal with which the Vedic people were originally familiar; later on, being introduced to iron, they gave it the name kṛṣṇāyas or black metal to distinguish it from the red colour of copper or bronze. Archaeological evidence places the introduction of iron around 1000 B.C., but iron implements seem to have come for frequent use from roughly 600 B.C.(Gopal, 1962).