Iron in Ancient India c5.14

c5.14

Abundant evidence has been quoted above to show that the use of iron was common in India from 2000 B.C. to the fourth century B.C. I shall purposely avoid referring to the later Purānas and Sanskrit literature as we find that from the first or second century after Christ not only iron was being used in the arts and industries but also in internal use as a medicine. The great religious reformer and alchemist Nāgārjuna who flourished in the middle o the second century A.D. discovered the process of "killing" iron and other metals and even introduced mercury preparations for internal use. Moreover in spite of the fact that iron rusts very easily, so many archæological specimens of iron of great antiquity are found throughout India that these specimens, alike remarkable for massiveness and age, show the use of iron in India on a very extensive scale and in all ages. We would now proceed to describe some of the important archæological specimens of iron found in different parts of India.