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Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c29.s3: The Literary Evidences

Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c29.s3

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English

The Literary Evidences

v1.c29.s3.1

There are different categories of evidences related to an archaeo-historical topic; a single category should be neither given exclusive importance nor altogether ignored, since what matters is the sum of the evidences, and their internal consistency.

v1.c29.s3.2

Agrawal *et al.* (1979: 391-92) have rightly criticised the old-style historical research divorced from natural science and addicted to the stock-in-trade cliches of ethnic or linguistic labels (e.g. Aryan invasion) but they overstepped their position by under-estimating the mass of literary data: "Most of our literary data are non-secular, chronologically and geographically ill-defined and reflect the world-view of the contemporary literate and ruling groups, and thus are hardly suitable for the writing of any (?) material history of the people". We are not so convinced that the use of the word 'any' in the previous sentence is justified. Indian literary data have other dimensions apart from the religious and dynastic world-views; in the ten chapters of our Vol. II we would discuss the huge and pertinent information that is available in the Indian literature regarding minerals and metals in ancient India.

v1.c29.s3.3

There is no question of accepting or using the literary data blindly. The Hastināpura archaeological evidence for example rules out any possibility that the material splendour described in the epic *Mahābhārata* could belong to 1000 BC Hastināpura. On the other hand, as pointed out by D.K. Ganguly (1990), many archaeological, numismatic and epigraphic data have been given widely divergent interpretations by different scholars. Mortimer Wheeler used his imperfect knowledge of the *Ṛgveda* to suggest the wild theory of racial (Aryan) intrusion causing the downfall of Harappan civilization. Many scholars including ourselves (Biswas, 1990) have exposed the 'Aryan myth', and have shown how the *Ṛgvedic* evidence illustrates the indigenous growth of a material civilization. Thus the literary sources may be used but with great caution.

v1.c29.s3.4

We would demonstrate in Volume II the powerful correlations of the literary evidences (on minerals and metals in ancient India) in the texts of Pāṇini, Kautilya, *Ratnaśāstras* and *Rasaśāstras* with the other categories of evidences of contemporary dates. When there is little or no contradiction, the huge amount of additional information from the literary sources gains the stature of plausibility and even serves as a tentative guide for further investigations. Mehta (1990) has illustrated how some Purāṇic texts and even oral and folk traditions have suggested archaeological probes and then received corroboration from the results of these probes.

v1.c29.s3.5

In the last chapter 10 of volume II we would not only comment on the correlations of the literary evidences with the archaeological data and other historical facts, but also deliberate on the philosophy of science in ancient India related to minerals, metals and other materials. Whereas the archaeo-material samples are mute, the literary evidences tell us about the state-of-art, the status of concepts and philosophy, the irrational and rational trends, existing side by side and competing with each other, and so on.

v1.c29.s3.6

Thus we cannot accept the scornful remarks of Agrawal et al. (1979: 391-92) that literary evidences are unsuitable for writing of ‘any’ material history. The readers may therefore consider the materials in our Volumes I and II conjointly, the concluding remarks being presented in the terminal chapters of each section: this chapter 21 of Volume I and chapter 10 of Volume II.

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