Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c25.s1: Gold Ore in Ancient India

Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c25.s1

Language: English

v1.c25.s1.t1 Gold in Alluvial Washings — 5 parts

Gold Ore in Ancient India

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In the Harappan civilization, we come across not only copper but also a few other metals such as gold, tin, lead and silver.

Gold has been used extensively for making ornaments in the Harappan culture. The gold used is rather pale in colour and it has been suggested that quite often it was used as electrum (mixture of gold and silver). Considering that gold from the Kolar and Hatti gold mines is also of light colour (electrum), it is justifiable to infer that surface collection of gold nuggets had started by the Harappan period. The Vedic literature refers to the light colour alloy, *rajata-hiranyam*. Clustering of the neolithic sites around gold mining areas, and recovery of gold ornaments from Tekkalkota (ear-rings) and Dāimābād confirm that the exploitation of these gold mines was continued, even after the Harappan period.

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Most of India's present gold output is from the quartz veins or reefs of Kolar mine. This tradition started in the first millennium BC. At Hatti, Karnataka, a narrow reef had been worked by the ancients to a length of some 1500 m and to a depth of 190 m by fire-setting alone. (Allchin, 1962) The PRL-253 sample from Hatti has been C-14 dated as 760 ± 150 BC. (It may be noted that around 1015 BC, King Solomon brought from India ‘gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks’). Various contrivances such as iron gauges, crucibles, stone crushers and windlashes appear to have been used as equipments to recover gold from the reefs; at times, amalgamation was also resorted to.

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During the pre-Christian era, Hatti and Maski in the Raichur doab were the main gold-workings. The neolithic sites of Piklihal, Kotekal, Maski etc. cluster around the Maski gold field on which we find Aśoka’s Minor Rock Edicts (three out of five rock edicts; the other two are on the neighbouring diamond fields of Yerragudi and Pattikonda). The Maurya association with Karnataka was evidently related to the royal demands of gold, diamond and gems.

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Hatti continued to yield gold in the post-Christian eras, and we have C-14 dates of AD 30 and AD 110 in Oakley’s 80 m depth shaft (*vide*, Agrawal, D.P. *et al.*, 1975-76: 139 and Table 17.1). The first C-14 dates for the famous gold field of Kolar have been obtained by D.P. Agrawal (1975-76). Champion reef at 50 m depth in Kolar was reached at AD 475 (Gupta Period) if not earlier. A later date of AD 685 in superficial layer suggests difficulty with the hard rock retreat mining.

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Active mining for reef gold went on in many gold fields of South India, such as Bellara, Kabligatti, Wynad and elsewhere. The famous inscription on the Tanjore temple shows that during the eleventh century AD gold (and not silver) was the most common precious metal in India. The metal was obtained from the mines by the eleventh-thirteenth century AD kings of South India, the Vijaynagara kings (1336-1560), and later by Ṭipū Sultān. Ball (1881: 182-83) described Wynad gold mine:

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The most remarkable are the vertical shafts, even in solid quartz, sometimes 70 ft deep, with smooth and quite plumb sides.... Stone were pounded with hand-mullers, and the pounded stone washed

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in a wooden dish and treated with mercury.

Gold in Alluvial Washings

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Gold occurs as ‘placer’ metal (alluvial or detrital) in the auriferous sands and gravels of a large number of rivers which pass over auriferous rocks. This must have been a major source of gold in ancient India. The rivers of Panjab, Madhya Pradesh, Maharasthra, Bihar etc. yielded gold from the immemorable past to the recent times. We present below a summary prepared from Ball’s observations (1880) on gold in ancient India.

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Eastwick (quoted by Ball) estimated in his book ‘Gold in India’ that Solomon received in 1015 BC, gold from Ophir in Malabar country. In the enumeration of nations and tribes which paid tribute to the Persian monarch, Darius (522-486 BC), “the Indians alone, we are told, paid in gold, all the others paying in silver”. The amount of the gold was 360 Euboeic talents. We have discussed in our chapter 15 the myth of ‘gold-digging ants as big as griffins’, first propagated by Herodotus, and explained that the Dardic people in Northern Kashmir and the Tibetans used to dig gold-mines during winter and under secrecy, surrounded by ferocious dogs. During Alexander’s time, Sopheithes (Saubhūti), the king around Jhelum possessed gold/silver deposits. Several centuries later, Pliny wrote: ‘Gold is very abundant among the Dardae (Dardic people in Kashmir)’.

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Ball emphasized (1880: 225-26):

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Evidence exists of the most conclusive kind of large quantities of gold having been amassed by Indian monarchs, who accepted a revenue in gold dust only, from certain sections of their subjects, who were consequently compelled to spend several months of every year washing for it in the rivers.

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Even during the last (19th) century, the European geologists could observe and record some of the traditional gold-washing practices in India such as in Manipur (1832, *JASB*, p. 148), Gomti river (1835, *JASB*, pp. 279-82), Assam (1838, *JASB*, pp. 625-28), the river Vipāsā in Panjab (1847) etc. In the last-mentioned paper, J. Abbott described (*Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal*, Vol. 16, 1847, pp. 266-68) how gold was being extracted from the quartz-hornblende bearing granite and gneiss rocks pounded by the boulders in the mountainous stream of Vipāsā, where the rivulet Chukki joined the river. The attrition-product, ‘literally dust’, was sieved and elutriated to obtain the ‘black sand’ containing gold. In half an hour, nine men were producing about two pounds of very fine and sparkling black sand. Then the material was amalgamated, and the amalgam put upon a piece of ignited cowdung, when ‘mercury flew leaving the yellow gold’. This process might have been used in India for centuries. A bibliography on gold in India (*Indian Minerals*, volume 25, 1971, pp. 82-92; 170 references) contains many references to the nineteenth century observations on traditional gold washing and smelting in India.