Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c27.s2.t3.1

v1.c27.s2.t3.1

The marvel of the Delhi iron pillar is twofold: one, its apparent rustlessness and the other, probably more striking, is that it could be fabricated at all 1600 years back! It shows what excellence Indian smiths had reached in the art of forge-welding. Tylecote (1984) suggested that the ‘pancake’ forging technique was used, but Prakash and Tripathi (1986: 576) wondered how the said technique, possible for forging short circular objects, could be feasible for an iron pillar of the size as in Delhi.