Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v2.c41.s5: Non-gem Minerals and Materials
Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v2.c41.s5
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Non-gem Minerals and Materials
v2.c41.s5.1
The Arthaśāstra mentioned the uses of several non-gem mineral and materials such as pigments, mordants, abrasives, materials producing alkali, salts, bitumen, charcoal, husk, an agricultural waste, etc.
v2.c41.s5.2
In use as pigments were *añjana*, antimony sulphide (2.11.35; 2.12.6 & 24) *manahśilā*, red arsenic sulphide (2.12.2; 2.14.48 etc.), *haritāla*, yellow arsenic sulphide (2.14.48; 2.22.6) and *hinguluka*, mercuric sulphide (2.13.19 & 46 etc.). These were also used as alloying reagents. Another pigment *gāndhāra* red lead (2.14.35) was used like *hinguluka* for embedding gold on metals. *Kāsīsa* green iron sulphate (2.13.19) and *sasyaka*, blue copper sulphate (2.11.35; 2.12.6) were used for colouring agents and later as mordants in dyeing clothes. Corundum or *kuruvinda*, having hardness nine in Moh’s Scale, was appropriately used as an abrasive (2.14.48) like diamond powder.
v2.c41.s5.3
Conch-shells (2.6.4; 7.12.24) and oyster-shells (2.11.35) were used not only for making bangles and other decorative items, but also to prepare *kṣāra* or alkali by calcination of calcium carbonate contained in it to alkaline calcium hydroxide (2.12.27). The word *kṣāra* meant ‘an extract’ and denoted sugar (2.15.14) as well as alkali from calcareous materials (2.12.27) and from the ash of barley *yavakṣāra* (2.12.9; 2.15.15) or *māṣa*-bean, sesamum, *palāśa*, etc. (2.12.9).
v2.c41.s5.4
*Yavakṣāra* or barley ash (containing potassium carbonate etc.) was considered to be one of the ‘salts’ or *lavaṇas*. The group of salts or *lavaṇavarga* included salt from saline soil, from the sea, *biḍa* salt which contains apart from sodium chloride, some calcium and magnesium salts and red iron oxide, pit salt and *sauvarcala* or borax (2.15.15).
v2.c41.s5.5
*Śilājatu* (2.12.4) or bitumen, also known as *adrija* was used as a medicine since the Harappan times and also a coating agent. Charcoal and husks from the forests and agricultural fields were utilised for their calorific value and carbonaceous content, in metal workshops, and the resultant ash further utilised for plastering walls (2.15.60 also 2.17.16).
v2.c41.s5.6
Of great commercial importance were metallic ores from which useful metals were extracted. The *Arthaśāstra* did not provide the names of the constituent minerals beyond referring to them as *dhātu* of iron (*tīkṣṇadhātu*), copper, lead, etc.
Linked texts (1)
- Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit