Copper in Ancient India c12.s2.9

c12.s2.9

It would be difficult to say whether such processes as described above were actually used on a large scale for manufacturing purposes in copper mines, though it is evident that they were used as laboratory methods on a small scale as covered crucibles are mentioned. From the existing archaeological and mineralogical evidences elaborated in previous chapters it is evident that copper was extracted in India from their ores in sufficiently large quantities from the third century B.C. when the Asoka pillar copper bolt was manufactured down to the Moghul period when large brass guns were cast, and that for that purpose the extraction must have taken place in big furnaces and not in small crucibles. Unfortunately literature on this subject has all perished by the ravages of time, and exact descriptions of the furnaces employed as well as of the metallurgical processes themselves are wanting at this great distance of time. Fortunately, however, copper smelting is still carried on in different parts of India, as has been already mentioned, in Khetri, Singhana and other places in Rajputana and in Nepal and Sikkim Himalayas, and judging from the conservatism of the people it is to be presumed that the industry was carried on for many centuries in a like manner though certainly not on such a poor scale. It has already been pointed out that the scientific and industrial spirit has been waning in India from the 12th or the 13th century, and by the middle of the 16th century the emasculation of the spirit of industry and inquiry has become almost complete owing to decadent national vitality, and most industries have in consequence gradually been relegated by that time into the hands of the illiterate and the least advanced sections of the Indian community. The metallurgical skill displayed by the ancient Indians in the forging of the gigantic iron pillars of Delhi and other places, the iron beams of Konarak, Puri and Bhubaneswar was certainly of very superior order, but descriptions of the furnaces, which were certainly of no mean dimensions, used in forging these beams and pillars and of the actual process of the extraction of iron, which must have been effected in very large quantities, have been lost in the obscurity of the distant past. Old processes, however, both of copper and iron smelting still continue, though on an infinitely smaller scale, amongst the aboriginal and the least advanced communities of India. These processes are important as relics of a bygone industry which produced in the past articles of value which still attract the unstinted admiration of competent judges and experts.