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Copper in Ancient India c10.s5: Manufacture of Brass from Zinc

Copper in Ancient India c10.s5

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Manufacture of Brass from Zinc

c10.s5.1

From the fact that brass was designated as an alloy by the thirteenth century, it might follow that at least from that time onwards brass was manufactured in India by melting the two metals. But as zinc was not generally recognised as a metal, and as brass was not generally recognised as an alloy of zinc before the sixteenth century, we cannot be certain of the fact that brass was manufactured in India directly from its constituent metals before that century. It is true that zinc was first distilled in India, as has already been stated, as early as the seventh century so that it may be presumed that brass was manufactured directly from zinc from that time onwards, but as direct evidence on that point is lacking the point cannot be urged with sufficient emphasis. Again we might be permitted to assert that brass was manufactured in India directly from zinc from the thirteenth century (i.e. at least three or four centuries earlier than in Europe) as it was recognised as an alloy at that time, but as the fact of its being prepared directly from the metals copper and zinc has been openly mentioned only in works of the sixteenth century and later (see before), it is safest to conclude that brass was undoubtedly manufactured in India directly from zinc from the sixteenth century onwards. Even then India was ahead of Europe in this respect by a century, as in Europe brass was manufactured directly from zinc not earlier than the last part of the seventeenth century.

c10.s5.2

Prior to this, brass must have been manufactured from calamine as in Europe. We have a recipe in Rasaratnākar (7th century) for the conversion of copper into a gold-like substance meaning evidently brass, by heating copper, calamine and organic substances in covered crucibles.¹ This recipe is quoted almost bodily in the alchemical work Rasāranva (12th century). The organic substances on being heated in covered crucibles evidently supplied the carbon necessary for the reduction of calamine.

c10.s5.3

¹ *Both Blockman and Gladwin evidently made a mistake in rendering ruh-i-tutia (essence of calamine) as “a kind of native pewter”, as it is mentioned as one of the seven metals, (the other six metals being gold, silver, copper, tin, iron and lead) and not as one of the alloys. The word is evidently Persian translation of the Sanskrit word rasaka-svattwam (रसकसत्व) or ja-svattwam (जासत्व)—meaning “essence of calamine.”

c10.s5.4

The famous Minguin bell in Burma. (Photograph by Johnston and Hoffmann).

c10.s5.5

Though brass has repeatedly been mentioned in alchemical works of the 13th century and later as an alloy, the proportions in which copper and zinc were mixed have not definitely been mentioned. From the Ayeen Akbari, however, we learn that during Moghul times brass was manufactured by melting two seers of copper and one and half seer of ruh-i-tutia or zinc.*

c10.s5.6

1. किमन चित्रं रसको रसेन ।
” ” भावितः ।
क्रमेण कत्वाधुधरेण रक्षितः ।
करोति शुल्ं त्रिपुटेन काहनम् । Rasaratnār, 1, 3.

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