Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c28.s12.1

v1.c28.s12.1

Our monograph is restricted to the ‘ancient’ period of Indian history which ends with the date of AD 1200. Of course, this date is provisional and somewhat arbitrary. Many scholars have argued that the medieval period in India started after the collapse of the Gupta empire. We may argue on the contrary that the Brāhmaṇic and Buddhistic traditions in India continued well beyond AD 1200. The thirteenth-fourteenth-century AD text Rasaratnasamuccaya and many other Sanskrit texts up to sixteenth century AD, not discussed in our monograph, distinctly reflect pre-Islam or pre-medieval traditions being constantly updated. After the fall of the Cola empire, the Vijayanagara and Nāyaka dynasties in the South patronised the ancient art of casting icons. This medieval continuity certainly did not reflect Islamic tradition. Even today the sthapatis or the icon-casters of Swamimalai, the temple-town on the bank of the Cauvery, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu, are earning their living by making bronze icons in accordance with a tradition which started well before AD 1200. (Ganapathi, 1990)