Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c25.s6.18

v1.c25.s6.18

The best known deposits are found in the Rajpipla Hills, at Ratanpur, on the lower Narmadā river (vide fig. 17.4), “whence for more than 2000 years, the lapidaries at Broach have obtained their supplies of rough carnelian, agate etc.” (Bauer, 1968: 517) The mother amygdaloidal rocks of the Deccan plateau extend from Surat to Kathiawar. Ball reported the Ratanpur mine shafts to be 4 ft in diameter and about 30 ft deep. At the foot of each shaft, galleries 5 ft high and 4 ft wide branched off on all sides. These passages about 100 yards long often joined the galleries of other mines. Ball (1881: 507-13) provided a detailed extract of Campbell’s account of the mining and lapidaries at Ratanpur. The pre-modern mines in India reported by the British geologists of the nineteenth century are outside the scope of our review; but we are mentioning the agate-carnelian mines of Rajpipla because the scholars are unanimous about the great antiquity of these workings. Furthermore, Peyton (Paithan or Pratisthana) on the Godavari has been identified as Plithana of the *Periplus* (1st century AD) where agate and onyx used to be mined and sent to the factories at Broach for processing and export. (Ball, 1881: 505)