Iron in Ancient India c9.s2.4

c9.s2.4

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."