Iron in Ancient India c3.1

c3.1

My object in preparing this series of monographs is to study the knowledge of the ancient Hindus of the different metals and their compounds from ancient Sanskrit literature, medical and non-medical, and also from analytical, archæological and mineralogical sources. Dr. P. C. Ray, in his well-known "History of Hindu Chemistry," has collected a large amount of medical or rather medico-chemical Sanskrit literature bearing on the knowledge of the Hindus of the metals and their compounds, but I would like to submit that there are other sources, specially non-medical Sanskritic and archæological literature, which would throw considerable light on the subject. It is my desire to bring together in a connected form the information on all these heads as far as practicable so that a more detailed history of Hindu Chemistry may be written afterwards.