Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c22.s6.4

v1.c22.s6.4

The tin ore or cassiterite, necessary to produce bronze, might have been obtained from Pālanpur state of western India, or Dhārwār district or Hazārībāgh in Bihar, but the most likely source for Taxila could have been the Khorassān and Kārādāgh hills in the Hindukush region where the close proximity of copper and tin ore reserves could have led to the earliest discovery of bronze in the Pre-Harappan era. In India, tin has been known as trapu or the ‘quick melting’ metal since the Vedic times, but around third century BC the other word for tin that entered the Sanskrit vocabulary was kastira, a modification of the Greek kassiteros or cassiterite (SnO₂). Similarly, the Greek oreichalcos for brass became ārakūṭa in Sanskrit which normally used the term riti for the said alloy. These are the metallurgical evidences for the early Indo-Greek contact in the north-west.