Copper in Ancient India c12.s2.11

c12.s2.11

Rajputana—Capt. Boileau in his “Gleanings in Science (Vo. III, p. 380) gives a description of the native process of manufacturing copper in Singhana as it existed in 1831 and Col. J. C. Brooke in 1864 gives an account of the same process in Khetri with diagrams and plates.¹ Their accounts may be summarised thus :—The principal ores in Singhāna and Khetri were copper pyrites. They were pounded with hammers weighing 16 to 20 lbs. on stone anvils. The crushed ores were then mixed with cow-dung, made into balls and dried in the sun. The ores were first roasted and then mixed with charcoal and iron slag as flux. There are hillocks of iron slag in these places showing that iron was also smelted here at one time in very large quantities. The furnace was made by piling on one another three or four concentric clay or fire clay cylinders with arrangement at the bottom for two nozzles of two ordinary hand bellows used for driving a blast of air. The height of a furnace would not exceed 30 or 40 inches and its external diameter 15.