Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c29.s3.2

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.