Copper in Ancient India c8.s2: Colossal Copper Statues of Buddha

Copper in Ancient India c8.s2

Language: English

Colossal Copper Statues of Buddha

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A remarkable copper statue of Buddha was discovered at Sultanganj in the district of Bhagalpur in the ruins of an old Buddhist monastery. It has been taken away and now preserved in the Birmingham Museum. The attention of students of metallurgy has not been sufficiently drawn to this remarkable copper colossus, which according to the mode of its construction and owing to the discovery of a coin of the last Western satrap of Surāstra accompanied with one of Chandragupta II in the vicinity of the monastery, has been taken to be a specimen of the metallurgical skill of the ancient Hindus of the fifth century A.D.¹

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¹ Vincent A Smith, History of fine arts in India and Cyclon, p. 172.

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Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitra, who first described this Buddha statue and other articles obtained in the ruins by Mr. Harris, a Resident Engineer, East India Railway,² says that it was 7 feet 6 inches high and its weight is estimated to be nearly 1 ton. There is one very remarkable fact about it *viz.*, that the outer garment is markedly transparent so that the body proper is visible through the outer garment. Dr. Mitra in describing the process of its construction says "the material is a very pure copper cast in two layers, the inner one in segments on an earthen mould and held together by iron bands which were originally ¾ of an inch thick, but are now very much worn down by rust. The casting of the face down to the breast was effected in one piece, the lower parts down to the knee in another and then the legs, feet, hands and back in several pieces”. The outer layer of copper seems to have been cast over the inner one presumably by the *cire perdue* process. Some iconoclast had bored a hole through the breast with the object of discovering treasure inside, but this process led to the discovery of nothing beyond the mould on which the figure had been cast. The substance of this mould looks like a friable cinder. Originally it consisted of a mixture of sand, clay, charcoal and paddy husks.

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² Journal, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1864, p.

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³⁶⁰ This statue has been referred to by Mr. Vincent A. Smith in his History of fine arts in India and Ceylon, p. 171 and 172; Cunningham in Arch. Sur. Ind. Reports Vol. X, p. 127 and XV, p. 126; Anderson, Cotalogue of the Indian Museum, Part II, p.

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⁴⁸¹ Mr. Smith points out that in the draft illustrated Handbook of the Birmingham Museum the statue is wrongly described as made of bronze.

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In the list of other articles found in the vicinity, as given by Dr. Mitra, we find the hand of another large copper figure and three small standing Buddha figures of copper. Lumps of copper ore were also found suggesting that the smelting and casting operations were done on the spot.

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Two facts are of metallurgical interest in connection with this remarkable figure. In the first place the virtual transparency of the outer copper garments reflects the greatest credit on the Hindu copper workers of the 5th century. In the second place the date naturally reminds one of the celebrated iron pillar at Delhi which was also constructed in the 5th century. This colossal copper statue and the Delhi iron pillar jointly serve to show that by the 5th century A.D. the ancient Hindus attained remarkable skill in smelting and working different metals. Moreover it is apparent that the production of iron and copper in India at that time was quite considerable.

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The same fact is borne out by another gigantic copper colossus of Buddha image, *no less than 80 feet in height*, described by the celebrated Chinese traveller Hiuen-Tsiang who actually saw it standing upright towards the east of the great Nalanda convent¹. Hiuen-Tsiang asserts that “a pavillion of six stages is required to cover” this gigantic copper colossus which in dimensions would approach the bronze colossus of the Rhodes Island. It was the work of Raja Purnavarman, the last descendant of king Asoka, a king of the seventh century.¹ The Rhodes colossus was destroyed by lightning, but history does not record the manner in which this less-known wonder of the world has gone out of sight from India. At any rate this gigantic colossus deserves special mention in the world's history of metallurgy of copper as a very remarkable specimen of copper work of the seventh century.