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Iron in Ancient India c9.s2: Historical

Iron in Ancient India c9.s2

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English

Historical

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Wootz seems to have been prepared from time immemorial in the Nizam's Dominions, Mysore and Salem, and other parts of the Madras Presidency and was the metal from which the famous Damascus blades were prepared. The presence of numerous Asoka pillars of stone cut out in a faultless manner from single pieces of stone of gigantic dimensions presupposes the use of the finest steel saws and steel chisels in India in the fourth century B.C. The use of a large number of surgical instruments in the Sushruta (third century B.C.), some of which "could bisect a hair longitudinally," also points out to the use of steel in India in making cutlery and surgical instruments in pre-Christian times. Moreover " we can hardly doubt that the tools with which the Egyptians covered their obelisks and temples of porphyry and syenite with hieroglyphics were made of Indian steel. There is no evidence to show that any of the nations of antiquity besides the Hindus were acquainted with the art of making steel. The notices which occur in the Greek and Latin writers on this subject serve only to betray their ignorance of it; they were acquainted with the qualities and familiar with the use of steel, but they appear to have been altogether ignorant of the mode in which it was prepared from iron. The arms and cutting instruments of the ancients were all formed of alloys of copper and tin, and we are certain that tools of such an alloy could not have been employed in sculpturing porphyry and syenite

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........ One certain fact has reached us regarding the antiquity of the steel manufacture in India: Quintus Curtius mentions that a present of steel was made to Alexander of Macedon by Porus, an Indian Chief, whose country he had invaded. We can hardly believe that a matter of about thirty pounds' weight of steel would have been considered a present worthy of the acceptance of the conqueror of the world, had the manufacture of that substance been practised by any of the nations of the West in the days of Alexander....... We know that a maritime intercourse was maintained from the remotest antiquity between the Malabar Coast, the Persian Gulf, the country about the mouths of the Indus and the Red Sea; and it appears reasonable to conclude that the steel of the south of India found its way by these routes to the country of Porus, to the nations of Europe and to Egypt."¹

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¹ J. M. Heath, Journal Royal Asiatic Society, 1839, Vol. V, 395.

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Abundant evidence is forthcoming to testify to the fact that India supplied the iron for the famous Damascus blades. Sir George Birdwood says, " Indian steel was celebrated from the earliest antiquity, and the blades of Damascus which maintained their pre-eminence even after the blades of Toledo became celebrated, were in fact of Indian iron. Ctasias mentions two wonderful Indian blades which were presented to him by the King of Persia and his mother. The Ondanique of Marco Polo's travels refers originally, as Col. Yule has shown, to Indian steel, the word being a corruption of the Persian Hundwaniy, i.e. Indian steel: The same word found its way into Spanish in the shape of "Al-hinde" and "Al-finde" first with the meaning of steel and then of a steel mirror and finally of the metal foil of a glass mirror. The Ondanique of Kirman, which Marco Polo mentions, was so called from its comparative excellence, and the swords of Kirman were eagerly sought after in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries A.D. by the Turks who gave great prices for them. Arrian mentions steel as imported into the Abyssinian ports, and Salmasius mentions that among the surviving Greek treatises was one on the tempering of Indian steel.¹ The celebrated traveller Tavernier writing about Indian iron of his time said, "The steel susceptible of being damasked comes from the Kingdom of Golconda; it is met with in commerce in lumps about the size of a half-penny cake; they are cut in two, in order to see whether they are of good quality, and each makes half the blade of a sabre." Even in the early part of the nineteenth century the trade in steel with Persia was quite profitable. Dr. Voysey in his article on the "Description of the Native Manufacture of Steel in Southern India"² writes: "The export, however, of the metal to Persia must be profitable, as it is sufficient to bring dealers from that country and to defray the cost and risk of travelling. We found at the village (named 'Kona Samundram,' 12 miles south of the Godaveri and 25 miles from Nirmul, celebrated for its manufacture of steel), in 1820, Haji Hosyn, from Ispahan, engaged in the speculation; and it must have answered his purpose, as he was here again in 1823, having returned in the interval to Persia and disposed of the venture. He informed us that the place and the process are both familiar to the Persians and that they have attempted to imitate the latter without success." Syed Hussain Bilgrami³ writes, "From time immemorial the iron of the Nizam's territories has been worked at Yalgharab, Nirmul, Juctial, Warangal and other places into blooms from which cast steel of a very superior quality was manufactured and exported to the far West. It has been proved that the raw material from which the famous Damascus blade was manufactured, was obtained from an obscure village in the Nizam's territory" (meaning perhaps the village of Kona Samundram described above by Dr. Voysey). The geologist Ball holds the same opinion and writes in his "Geology of India" that "there are distinct evidences that wootz was exported to the West in very early times, possibly 2000 years ago."

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¹ Sir George Birdwood's "Hand-book to the British Indian Section of the Paris Exhibition of 1878."

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² An extract from the manuscript journals of Dr. Voysey printed in Journal Asiatic Society (of Bengal), Vol. I, 1832, p. 247.

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³ Syed Hossain Bilgrami on "Iron Industry in Hyderabad," Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 1899, No. 11, p. 75.

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It would interest readers to learn in what parts of India itself, which supplied the steel for making Damascus blades, swords were manufactured. We find a list of such places in *Yukti-kalpataru*, which has already been referred to as a manuscript of the eleventh century, which says that swords were manufactured in Benares, Magadha, Ceylon, Nepal, Anga, Mysore, Surat and Orissa (Kalinga) and describes the qualities of the swords manufactured in the various places.¹ We have found a similar reference in *Śārangadhar-Paddhati*, a work undoubtedly composed in the fourteenth century by the alchemist Śārangadhar. In it we find that in the fourteenth century the following places were noted for the manufacture of swords, viz. Khatikhattara, Rishi, Banga (Bengal), Shurporaka, Videha (Mithilā or Tirhut), Anga (Bhāgulpur), Madyamā-grām, Bedidesha, Sahagrām, and Kalinjar, and that swords manufactured in China were "faultless and pure."' In *Shārangadhar Padhati* as well as in *Yukti-kalpataru* long chapters on the dimensions and qualities of swords as well as on varieties of iron and their different colours have been inserted.

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¹ तद्यथा वाराणसीमगधसिंहलभूमिषु नेपालभूमिषु तथाङ्गमैसूरप्रदेशे । खोरराष्ट्रिक्यन्तरधन्यसद्‌विभागमे शुदावयां ज्ञातवरां प्रवदन्ति जम्बा तद् यथा ॥ वाराणसेयाः सुस्निग्धास्तिक्ष्णधाराः सद्विषाः । मगधजाः सुसम्भवेयाः क्षेयोचाभिद्यमासिनः । मागधाः कर्कशास्त्यक्तधारास्तरोत्तरिणः । गुरवो दुःसम्भवेयाः कङ्गाज्ञेया विचक्षसैः । नेपालदेशप्रभवाः निरङ्काः निषदाश्च ये । अङ्गाः सद्वशमलिनाः जम्बकः खड्गधारिणः । कलिङ्गाः गुरवः सच्छायताश्चानुसेतवाः । ओराङ्काः निर्गताः स्निग्धाः सुप्रभाश्चाष्टमङ्गराः । सिंहलद्वीपजातानां चतुर्भेद उच्यते । केचित् सदङ्गा गुरवः कर्कशास्त्यक्तधारिणः । केचित् सदलम्बवः सच्छिद्रभास्त्यक्तधारिणः । युक्तिकल्पतरु ।

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The Sanskrit equivalent for steel is *tikshna*. The word occurs in the *Arthasāstra* (p. 83) and in the *Sushruta* (see *ayaskriti*), but it is doubtful if the word meant any particular *kind* of iron in those ancient times. In the *Rasaratna-samucchaya* six varieties of *tikshna* iron are mentioned (see p. 45). In the *Bhāvaprakāsha* (sixteenth century) steel is called *shār-lauha*, and is described as a "kind of iron which when treated with acid becomes as sharp as the peak of a mountain."

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