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Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c26.s8: Primacy of India in Zinc and Brass Metallurgy

Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c26.s8

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Primacy of India in Zinc and Brass Metallurgy

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The awareness that undivided India was the first country in the world where cementation brass, zinc metal, and brass through direct mixing of metals were made, has emerged only very recently. As late as 1956 Ray wrote erroneously (1956: 97) that “brass appears to have been introduced in Northern India, probably through Chinese trade”. The spectacular discoveries made by Hegde, Craddock, Willies etc. in the eighties have radically improved our knowledge on the subject which has been summarised by us. (Biswas *et al.*, 1990)

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In June 1985, the Royal Society of England arranged an international seminar on “2000 years of Zinc and Brass” at Bristol, acknowledging India’s pioneering contribution in the area since the onset of the Christian era. We have shown in this chapter however that the Indian tradition for making cementation brass is probably 3500 years old; the tradition originated at Lothal, Rajpura-Dariba and Atrañjikhera and culminated with the unique fourth century BC brass artefacts from Taxila.

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Questions have been raised as to whether zinc was known as a separate metal and ‘consciously’ used as a constituent of brass in ancient India; we have satisfactorily met these questions with affirmative answer. (Biswas *et al.*, 1990: 53-56 and 65) We re-emphasize the two major points made in this regard: (1) the fourth century BC brass vase of Taxila assaying 34.34 per cent zinc could be made only by mixing (with copper) the separately distilled product of zinc, and not by the cementation process; (2) the text *Rasaratnākara* of Nāgārjuna citing (1.31-32) the reduction-distillation of calamine yielding zinc metal with ‘an essence of the appearance of tin’ refers to the second (and not seventh) century AD tradition in India.

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Zinc ore was being mined at Zawar and brass produced at Taxila before the Greeks and Chinese entered the country and learnt about the techniques. Much later, the Europeans became aware of zinc as a separate metal, although they had been making cementation brass by direct reduction of calamine with copper ore.

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In India, the words for brass — *ārakūṭa* and *ritikā* or *riti* — were used in the pre- and post-Christian era. Rasaka stood for calamine ore as well as the sattva or the metal content in it, namely zinc. Madanpāla-Nighaṇṭu of 1374 AD mentioned yaśadam vaṅgasadṛśam or the ‘zinc metal (yaśada) like tin’. Yaśada means that which gives yaśa or fame; the connotation was clear insofar as zinc was known to produce the famous gold-like yellow alloy of brass (vide second-century AD text Rasaratnākara, 1.3). The European word ‘zinc’ was probably derived from yaśada; the Sanskrit word became dastā in several Indian languages. In 1597 Libavius (c. AD 1545-1616) received Indian zinc, which he called ‘Indian or Malabar lead’. He was uncertain what it was. Although Paracelsus (AD 1616) is generally credited to have given the name ‘zinc’ to the metal, the import of the metal from India to the West started only in the seventeenth century, and according to Roscoe (Treatise on Chemistry, Vol. 2, pp. 643-44), the identification of zinc as the metal from blende or calamine was accomplished by Homberg in 1695. (Neogi, 1917, 1979: 47).

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As late as 1751, Postlewayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce had to admit ignorance of how the zinc metal was made in the East. In 1731, imported zinc commanded a price of 260 £ a ton on the London market, whereas the abundant calamine, used to make cementation brass, cost only 6 £ a ton. (Craddock et al., 1985: 51)

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In 1730, William Champion of Warmley (near Bristol, England), started experiments on making zinc metal from calamine by the reduction-distillation route. In 1738, he applied for a patent and in 1743, he commenced production of zinc. Morgan (1981), a modern expert of Imperial Smelting Processes (ISP) Ltd., wonders how such ‘a remarkable achievement was completed in so short a time’. Both Morgan as well as Craddock et al. (1985: 52) noted that: “Champion was notoriously close with details to Indian process at Zawar; possibly a third party described the general principle of the process to Champion”.

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The process at Warmley used the same arrangement of retorts and the same technique of ‘distillation per descensum’ as in Zawar and even included 1.5 weight per cent common salt in the zinc-smelting charge. The closeness was indeed ‘notorious’! Craddock et al. (1985) possibly overlooked the significant remark made on the subject by Ball. Mentioning about Beckmann’s History of Inventions (Bohn’s Edition, ii, p. 32), and his comments about the earliest efforts for making zinc in Europe, V. Ball wrote:

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Beckmann adds that an Englishman went to India in the seventeenth sentury to discover the process used there in the manufacture (of zinc), and returned with an account that it was obtained by distillation per descensum. I have not yet been able to identify this Englishman. (Ball, 1886-87: 322)

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It is thus established that there was a technology transfer from Zawar in India to Bristol in England some time around 1730. It is interesting to note that after two and a half centuries, zinc ore from the modern Zawar mines may be smelted by the Imperial Smelting Process developed at Avonmouth, just a few kilometres from the site of Champion's works. Craddock *et al.* (1985: 52) have noted with satisfaction that this is ‘a striking example of continuity and the reciprocal nature of scientific and technological development throughout the world’. We also note with a sense of achievement that a method has been developed for extracting zinc from the huge debris of ancient siliceous residues. (Biswas and Kumar, 1986) The visibly widespread zinc residues point to the glorious past as well as exciting future in the scenario of a modern establishment.

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Ball, V., 1886-87, “Zinc and Zinc Ores, Their Mode of Occurrence, Metallurgy, and History, in India”, In *The Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society*, Vol. 5, 1886-87, pp. 321-31.

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Barnes, J.W., 1973, *Bulletin Historical Metallurgy Society*, 7, pp. 8-17.

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Biswas, A.K., 1981-84, Annual Reports to Hindustan Zinc Limited, Udaipur: ‘Studies on Recovery of Zinc from Floatation Tailings and Ancient Slags’, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

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Biswas, A.K., Gangopadhyay, A. and Ramachandran, T.R., 1984, “Phase Studies on Zinc Residues of Ancient Indian Origin”, In *Transactions of the Indian Institute of Metals*, Vol. 37, No. 3, June 1984, pp. 234-41.

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Biswas, A.K. and Kumar, Rakesh, 1986, “Zinc Recovery from Zawar Ancient Siliceous Slag”, In *Hydrometallurgy*, 15, 1986, pp. 267-80.

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Biswas, A.K., 1987, Rasa-Ratna-Samuccaya and Mineral Processing State-of-Art in the thirteenth century AD India, In *Indian Journal of History of Science*, 22, 1, 1987, pp. 29-46.

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Biswas, A.K., Biswas, S. and Chakravorty, N.A., 1990, “Archaeo-Material Studies in India and Literary Evidences”, In *Historical Archaeology of India*, edited by A. Ray and S. Mukherjee, Books and Books, New Delhi, pp. 49-66.

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Brooke, J.C., 1850, “Notes on the Zinc Mines of Zawar”, In *Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal*, Vol. 19, 1850, pp. 212-15.

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Carus, H.D., 1960, “Historical Background”, In *Zinc* edited by C.H. Mathewson, pp. 1-8, American Chemical Society Monograph.

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Chatterjee, B.N., and Agarwal, B.L., 1981, How Zawar Beneficiates Low Grade Lead-Zinc Sulphide Ore, In *Proceedings on International Seminar on Lead, Zinc and Cadmium*, New Delhi, Nov. 1981, Volume 1, pp. 72-B.97.

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Craddock, P.T., 1978, The Composition of the Copper Alloys Used by the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Civilization — The Origins and Early Use of Brass, In *Journal of Archaeological Science*, 5, pp. 1-16.

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Craddock, P.T., Burnett, A.M. and Preston, K., 1980, Hellenistic Copper-Base Coinage and the Origins of Brass, In Scientific Studies in Numismatics, edited by W.A. Oddy, Occasional Paper No. 18, British Museum, pp. 53-64.

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Craddock, P.T., 1981, The Copper Alloys of Tibet and Their Background, In Aspects of Tibetan Metallurgy, Occasional Paper No. 15, British Museum, 1981, pp. 1-31.

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Craddock, P.T., Gurjar, L.K. and Hegde, K.T.M., 1983, Zinc Production in Medieval India, World Archaeology, 15, 2, 1983, pp. 211-17.

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Craddock, P.T., 1984, Goat Path Discovery Unlocks Secrets of Medieval Zinc, IAMS Newsletter, No. 6, Institute of Archaeology, London.

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Craddock, P.T., Freestone, I.C., Gurjar, L.K. and Sonavane, V.H., 1985, Early Zinc Production in India, Mining Magazine, January 1985, pp. 45-52.

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Day. J., 1972, Bristol Brass: The History of the Industry, Newton Abbot.

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Farnsworth, M., Smith, C.S. and Rodda, J.L., 1949, Metallographic Examination of a Sample of Metallic Zinc from Ancient Athens, In Hesperia, Supplement 8, pp. 126-29.

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Freestone, I.C., 1982, “Applications and Potential of EPMA Analysis of Ancient Ceramics”, In Archaeometry, pp. 99-116.

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Freestone, I.C., and Powell, R., 1983, “The Low Temperature Field of Liquid Immiscibility in the System K₂O-FeO-Al₂O₃-SiO₂”, In Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, 82, pp. 291-99.

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Freestone, I.C., Craddock, P.T., Hegde, K.T.M., Hughes, M.J. and Paliwal, H.V., 1985 a, “Zinc Production at Zawar, Rajasthan”, In Furnaces and Smelting Technology in Antiquity, edited by P.T. Craddock and M.J. Hughes, Occasional Paper No. 48, British Museum, 1985, pp. 229-44.

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Freestone, I.C., Craddock, P.T., Gurjar, L.K., Hegde, K.T.M. and Paliwal, H.V., 1985b, “Analytical Approaches to the Interpretation of Medieval Zinc-Smelting Debris from Zawar, Rajasthan”, In Journal of Archaeological Chemistry, Volume 3, December, 1985, pp. 1-12.

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Freestone, I.C., and Middleton, A.P., 1987, “Mineralogical Applications of the Analytical SEM in Archaeology”, In Mineralogical Magazine, March 1987, Vol. 51, pp. 21-31.

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Haedecke, K., 1973, “Gleichgewichtsverhältnisse bei der Messingherstellung nach dem Galmeiverfahren”, In Erzmetall, 26, 1973, pp. 229-33.

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Hegde, K.T.M., Craddock, P.K. and Sonavane, V.H., 1986, “Zinc Distillation in Ancient India”, In Proceedings of the 24th International Archaeometry Symposium, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1986, pp. 249-58.

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Hegde, K.T.M., 1989, “Zinc and Brass Production in Ancient India”, In Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1989, pp. 86-96.

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Hughes, M.J., Cowell, M.R. and Craddock, P.T., 1976, “Atomic Absorption Techniques in Archaeology”, In Archaeometry, 18, pp. 19-38.

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Jones, T.L., 1968, Strabo, Geography Book XIII, 56, Heinemann (Loeb Classical Library), London.

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Mackay, J.E.M., 1938, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro, Volume 1, Delhi.

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Mookherjee, A., 1964, “Geology of the Zawar Lead-Zinc Mine, Rajasthan”, In Economic Geology, 59, pp. 657-77.

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Morgan, S.W.K., 1981, William Champion as a Metallurgist, paper presented to Historical Metallurgical Society meeting at Bath, 20 September, 1981.

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Neogi, P. 1917, Copper in Ancient India, reprinted in 1979 by Janaki Prakashan, Patna.

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Paliwal, H.V., Gurjar, L.K. and Craddock, P.T., 1986, “Zinc and Brass in Ancient India”, In Canadian Mining and Metallurgical Bulletin, Vol. 79, No. 885, Jan. 1986, pp. 75-79.

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Ray, P. (ed). 1956, History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India, Indian Chemical Society, Calcutta.

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Tite, M.S., Meeks, N.D., and Craddock, P.T., 1985, In The Archaeologist and the Laboratory edited by P. Philips, Council for British Archaeology Research Report, No. 58, pp. 50-55.

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Tiwari, R.K., and Kavdia, N.K., 1984, “Ancient Mining Activity Around Agucha Village, Bhilwara District, Rajasthan”, In Man and Environment, Vol. 8, 1984, pp. 81-87.

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Tod, J., 1829, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Smith and Elder, London, Vol. 1, p. 399; 1950 edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited, 1950.

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