Iron in Ancient India c9.s2.2

c9.s2.2

........ 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