Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c27.s1.2

v1.c27.s1.2

Quintus Curtius reported that Alexander the Great received one hundred talents, about three tons, of *ferrum candidum* or bright iron from the vanquished Malloi and Oxydrakai (326 BC). Most possibly this was not steel but carburised iron (white cementite or wootz?) which could be converted into steel. In Kauṭilya’s *Arthaśāstra* (later half of fourth century BC), the words *vaikṛntaka*, *kālāyasa* and *vṛtta* have been mentioned several times (2.12.23; 2.17.14; 4.1.35) and translated by several scholars as magnetite, wrought iron and steel respectively. Was *vṛtta* ‘the crucible steel’, so named on account of the approximately circular cross-section of the carburised iron ingot (made from magnetite) solidifying in the crucible, and later known in South India as wootz? It is not clear whether the 108 ingots, obtained in the first century AD site of Taxila, which measured 1-2 inches in cross-section, were circular in cross-section and prepared in crucibles. These were porous, contained 0.1 per cent carbon, and could have been carburized at a later stage; were crucibles used for this purpose?