Copper in Ancient India c6.s2.10

c6.s2.10

Enough evidence has been adduced in the author's *Iron in Ancient India* (pp. 3-7) to show that the use of iron and iron weapons was well-known at the time when the Rigveda was composed not to speak of the times of the later Vedas and the Brāhmans. The general use of copper by the first Aryan settlers appears to be distinctly later as it is not mentioned in the earliest of the Vedas. In the Rigveda we find that arrows were "tipped with iron" though we come across with a "copper knife" (p. 7) in the Atharvaveda. It is possible that a copper knife, owing to the peculiar sanctity, attached by the Hindus to copper, might have been used in the sacrifices. Even taking it for granted for the sake of argument that the mention of a copper knife in the Atharvaveda presupposes the use of copper as a material for making weapons, there is hardly anything to be wondered at this, as, so long as the process of hardening iron by quenching or the process of steel-making is not discovered there is not much to choose between malleable iron and copper, though bronze would certainly be more preferable to copper being in point of hardness more approachable to iron. Bronze does not appear to have been known in the Vedic Age¹ and as a matter of fact there was no bronze age in India at all (see bronze). The process of hardening iron by quenching, as well as steel were certainly discovered in India as early as the third century B.C. as both are mentioned in the well-known medical treatise of Sushruta and it is possible that during the Vedic age, in addition to iron, copper might have sometimes been used as a material for making weapons.