Iron in Ancient India c5.8

c5.8

As regards ancient medical literature we find in the great medical work of Sushruta, who should have flourished in the 3rd or 4th century B.C., as can be guessed from the Bower manuscripts edited by Hoernle, elaborate description of nearly one hundred kinds of surgical instruments by means of which many major operations such as opening of the abdomen, eye operations, dissection of the fœtus, were performed. A great many of them must have been prepared from the best steel, for which India was so justly famous from time immemorial, as we find that the dissecting instruments had an edge which would be less than ‘half of a piece of hair bisected longitudinally.’ The instruments were used to be whetted on a stone having the colour of ‘māskalāi’ (a kind of black pulse).