Iron in Ancient India c9.s2.1

c9.s2.1

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