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Copper in Ancient India c7.s2: Date of the Copper Age in India

Copper in Ancient India c7.s2

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English

Date of the Copper Age in India

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We would now proceed to consider the question of the probable date of the copper age in India. Two hypotheses are possible—either these implements were used by the Aryan conquerers or they were used by the original inhabitants of India who were ultimately conquered by the Aryans and gradually brought to the Aryan fold.

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Regarding the first hypothesis it has already been pointed out that the Aryans were acquainted with the use of iron (ayas) from the time of their earliest habitation in the Punjab as it is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda, the earlist of the Vedas, and according to Max Mueller, the earliest composition of any nation in the world. On the other hand copper (loha) came into general use amongst the Aryans much later (about 1000 B.C.) as it is frequently mentioned in the Atharvaveda and the Brāhmans but not in the Rigveda. Having known the use of iron it is not very likely that the ancient Aryans used copper as an ingredient for making implements to an appreciable extent. Though a copper knife is mentioned in the Atharvaveda it is likely that owing to the peculiar sanctity attached to copper, a copper knife might have been used in sacrificial rites. It is therefore very likely that the copper implements discovered in ancient India were not used by the Aryans themselves.

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If these implements were not used by the Aryans, the other alternative becomes that they were used by the original inhabitants of Northern India, who passed from the Neolithic period to the iron age through an intermediate copper age before the conquest of Northern India by the Aryans who taught them the use of iron. Direct evidence in favour of this hypothesis is forthcoming.

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Mr. Vincent A. Smith has dealt with the question of the probable date of the copper age in Northern India and concludes that all the Indian copper implements are certainly extremely old and must be dated previous to 1000 B.C. Probably they are much earlier “and that the primitive celts of Northern India, which are obviously copies of Neolithic patterns, may be as old as 2000 B.C.” He further writes “the guess hazarded above as to the possible date of the northern examples has really little foundation, being largely based upon the dates assumed for Ireland.”

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But European analogies are not always very safe guides in determining questions of age relating to ancient Indian history. European analogy would suggest a bronze age to have intervened between the stone and iron ages, in India, whilst as a matter of fact there was no bronze age in India. If any guess regarding the probable date of the copper age is permissible, such hypothesis should be based mainly on internal evidence as the evolution of Indian civilization took place in a different manner from Ireland. I would venture to put forward here my own views on the subject.

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I would entirely agree with Mr. Vincent A. Smith in thinking that “in the greater part of Northern India a copper age intervened between the Neolithic period and the iron age.” Two evidences on this subject are conclusive. In the first place the wide area over which the finds of the copper implements have been distributed shows that the copper implements were used throughout the greater part of Northern India including certain parts of the Central Provinces, as the Gunjeria deposit by reason of its contents must be associated with Northern India. Secondly, this very large number of weapons including agricultural and domestic implements in the Gunjeria deposit is a conclusive proof of the fact that copper implements were largely used in Northern India at some period of her history. As Mr. Smith himself points out, the celts from Upper India found at Mathura, Bijnor, Mainpuri and Bithur are all, with one exception, of the kind known to archaeologists as ‘flat celts,’ extremely primitive in form “closely imitating common stone models and obviously referable to a period when metal was only beginning to supersede stone.” As the Aryans were undoubtedly well acquainted with at least two metals viz. gold and iron even at the time of the composition of the Rigveda, it would thus appear that the people who used these copper celts were not the Aryans but the *direct lineal descendents of the Neolithic people who inhabitated India before the Aryan conquest*. The copper age appears to have been spread over a tolerably wide interval of time, as much improvement in the technique of the construction of some of the implements as those found in the Gunjeria deposit and the spear heads would suggest.

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The question of the copper age naturally therefore resolves into the determination of the time when the Aryans conquered Northern India from its aboriginal inhabitants. That date would form the lower limit of the copper age, as the Aryans evidently taught the original inhabitants of Northern India the use of iron in the place of copper. Now in the time of the Rigveda the Aryans were in their first settlement in the Punjab on the banks of the Indus and its tributaries. "The Yajurveda introduces us not only to a geographical area different from that of the Rigveda but also a new epoch of religious and social life in India. We no more hear of the Indus and its tributaries, for the geographical data of all the rescensions of the Yajurveda point to the territory in the middle of Northern India occupied by the neighbouring people of the Kurus and Pāñchālas. It lay in the plain between the Sutlej and the Jamuna. But the conquest of Northern India appears to have been complete during the Brāhman age. In the Sathapatha Brāhman we find that "the Brāhminical system had by this time spread to the countries to the east of Madhaydesh, to Koshala with its capital Ajodhya (Oudh) and Videha (Tirhut or Northern Behar) with its capital Mithila."² Buddha who preached a religion antagonistic to Brāhminism in many respects was born in 507 B.C. and when Alexander came to invade India, the Indian troops as we learn from Herodotus had arrows tipped with iron.³ It would thus appear that by 1000 B.C. the greater part of Northern India was conquered and Aryanised and by the seventh century B.C. the Aryans begen to penetrate into Southern India. I would therefore agree with Mr. Smith, though for entirely different reasons, that all the copper implements must be dated previous to 1000 B.C. and that the most primitive forms may be as old as 1500-2000 B.C.

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¹ Macdonell, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 175.

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² Ibid. 214.

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³ Rawlinson's Herodotus.

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Prehistoric copper celts and spear or harpoon heads discovered in the Bijnor district. (Indian Antiquary, 1915, p. 236).

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Prehistoric copper celts discovered at Bithur (one of them being a spear-head). (Indian Antiquary, 1907, p. 53.)

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