Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c23.6

v1.c23.6

Chakraborti (1971) has reviewed the problem of tin in early India. During the Pre-Harappan and Harappan period, the main supply of tin was most probably from the western regions: Khorasan and the area between Bukhara and Samarkand. There were ancient tin mines in the Kara Dagh district in north-western Iran and in the modern Afghan-Iranian Seistan. The supply of tin metal or ores to the Harappan sites was never profuse. The metal-smiths used to economise on tin by storing and re-using scrap pieces of bronze, making low-tin alloys and substituting tin in bronze by arsenic. The Harappan centres probably exported a part of the imported tin (like lapis lazuli) to Mesopotamia. A cylinder seal of Gudea of Lagash (2143-2124 BC) read: “copper, tin, blocks of lapis lazuli—bright carnelian from the land of Meluhha”. (Muhly, 1976) Similar sources might have continued to satisfy the needs of tin in Taxila and at the same time the West Asian and Graeco-Roman requirements by trade through the Indus ports.