Iron in Ancient India c8.s1.8

c8.s1.8

It is a matter for regret that Sanskrit literature, as far as is known to the author, contains little or no information regarding the actual method of the manufacture of iron or the furnaces employed in smelting the ores or in forging iron, though we can easily conceive that the furnaces, which forged the Delhi and other pillars even piece by piece, must have been of great dimensions. There existed undoubtedly *lohasāstras* or "sciences of iron (or metals)", the author of one of which was Patanjali, who flourished in the second century B.C. and was the commentator of the celebrated grammarian Pānini. These unfortunately have all perished. Ball speaks only what is half true when he says, " The rude smelting-furnaces of the natives . . . are probably to a great extent the lineal descendants of a system of iron manufacture, which, in the earliest times of which we have any record, must have been on a scale of considerable magnitude."¹ We may, however, readily admit that the principle followed in the existing indigenous method of manufacturing iron was probably the same in ancient times, though iron must have been produced in India on a very large scale and in much bigger furnaces by intelligent Hindu workers.