Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c17.s1.1

v1.c17.s1.1

Since 1822 numerous copper objects have been discovered from various parts of Eastern India — in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, the hills of Chota Nagpur, Orissa, West Bengal, etc. Vincent Smith (1905, 1907) was the first to collate a comprehensive survey of the ‘copper hoards’, in U.P., M.P., West Bengal and Bihar. Since then further discoveries have been made by many archaeologists such as B.B. Lal (1951), S.P. Gupta (1965), Subhra Bose (1987), etc. *Fig. 9.1* shows the distribution of ‘copper hoards’ and other bronze and copper implements (Lal, 1951: 21), Allchins (1983: 254) have considered the hoards as divided, culturally, into two main groups, those of the Doab and those of the more easterly province, the former comprising about half of the total.