Iron in Ancient India c9.s3.12

c9.s3.12

Judging from the conservatism of the people we would expect to find the same process in working in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, though it must be confessed, on an infinitely smaller scale, as the scientific spirit of enquiry and industrial enterprise seem to have almost left India to find a new habitat in Europe at the close of the seventeenth century. We have, however, got excellent account of steel manufacture in Southern India from the accounts of travellers like Dr. Voysey (1795), Buchanan (1800) and Heyne (1794-1814). The process of Indian steel-making may be summarised in the following way—wrought iron is first obtained by the *direct method*, viz. heating the ores of iron with charcoal in small blast furnaces (the blast being admitted by means of hand bellows) without the intermediate formation of cast iron as has already been described. The wrought iron is then cut into small pieces and taken in crucibles along with certain kinds of wood and leaves of plants and then heated in charcoal blast furnaces with the lids closed. The blast is continued from four to six hours when the steel is obtained in the molten condition. Water is then sprinkled or poured on the metal, which is thus hardened on being quenched and the steel obtained in a crystalline condition.