Copper in Ancient India c5.2

c5.2

So far as India is concerned, it appears that copper was known in the later Vedic age and specially in the Brahman age, and it does not appear to have been mentioned in the Rig-Veda, the earliest of the Vedas. A copper age intervened in Northern India after the neolithic period, the copper implements being very likely used by the original non-Aryan inhabitants of India, their Aryan conquerors being fully acquainted with the use of iron from the time of their first settlement in the Punjab. Southern India passed directly from the stone to the iron age and no bronze age intervened in any part of India as in the case of Europe. As a matter of fact I concur in the assertion that the Eastern origin of the bronze age must definitely be abandoned.