Iron in Ancient India c7.s5.4

c7.s5.4

As regards the Delhi pillar, the forging in this case is much more perfect than that of the Orissan beams and hence difficult to detect. The Committee of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1872, however, made some special enquiries with regard to this pillar.¹ Lieutenant Spratt of the Royal Engineers, then stationed at Delhi, came to the conclusion after enquiry that "the iron of which the pillar is made seems to have been originally in blooms of about 80 lbs. weight each." Even as early as 1858 Mr. Charles Wood of Middlesburgh, who was in India at the time of the Mutiny, stated that he believed that the pillar was of wrought iron and that it had been made by welding small pieces into the end of a shaft or bar. In 1871 Mr. Robert Mallet had stated: "We are thus obliged to consider that this pillar is not a casting but a huge forging in .... wrought iron," while shortly afterwards Mr. G. M. Fraser contributed a long letter to the *Engineer*, Vol. xxxiii, pp. 19, 20, in which the fact is clearly expreseed that the pillar was made of malleable iron and produced by welding together successive lumps or *mootees* of wrought iron which had been produced in a primitive blast-furnace. Fergusson, Vincent Smith, Ganguli and others agree in subscribing to this theory. This theory receives an added confirmation from the existence of many holes at irregular intervals in the Dhar pillar into which crowbars have evidently been put in order to help welding. Though at first sight the almost perfect finish of the exterior, specially of the Delhi pillar, negatives the hypothesis of forging small pieces into one whole, but when we judge of the almost unsurmountable practical difficulties of forging an *entire* piece of wrought iron as the Delhi or Dhar pillar appears to be, the author, at any rate, cannot but subscribe to the view that the method of forging the Delhi, Dhar, and Mount Abu pillars, as well as the gigantic Orissan beams, is unmistakably the same, viz. the method of welding short pieces into entire pillars and beams.