Iron in Ancient India c6.s8.21

c6.s8.21

Another inscribed big gun was presented in 1891 by Captain Petley, being dug up at False Point, to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in whose rooms it has been preserved. Mr. C. R. Wilson from the inscription reads the date as [1] 584 Saka era or 1622 A.D., and says: "The gun was captured from Aurungzebe's General, Mir Jumla in 1662, by Svargadev Jayadhvaja Sinha, the then reigning Ahom Prince of Assam. From Assam it was carried away to Burma. It was taken by the English in the first Burmese War and on the completion of the light-house at False Point in 1838, it seems to have been removed from the old fort at Cuttack and buried in the ground near the light-house to hold a flag staff."² This gun was also manufactured in the same way as the Dacca guns from wrought iron. Mahamahopadhaya H. P. Shastri, who examined the gun, writes: "The gun is made in the old-fashioned method of welding together a number of large iron rings, three inches thick, with an opening in the middle with a diameter of three inches."³