History of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent

The history of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent began prior to the 3rd millennium BCE and continued well into the British Raj. Metals and related concepts were mentioned in various early Vedic age texts. The Rigveda already uses the Sanskrit term Ayas (metal). The Indian cultural and commercial contacts with the Near East and the Greco-Roman world enabled an exchange of metallurgic sciences. With the advent of the Mughals, India's Mughal Empire (established: April 21, 1526—ended: September 21, 1857) further improved the established tradition of metallurgy and metal working in India.

Quotes

• The Hindus seem to have been the first people to mine gold.... Much of the gold used in the Persian Empire in the fifth century before Christ came from India. Silver, copper, lead, tin, zinc and iron were also mined-iron as early as 1500 B.C. U The art of tempering and casting iron developed in India long before its known appearance in Europe; Vikramaditya, for example, erected at Delhi (ca. 380 A.D.) an iron pillar that stands untarnished today after fifteen centuries; and the quality of metal, or manner of treatment, which has preserved it from rust or decay is still a mystery to modern metallurgical science." Before the European invasion the smelting of iron in small char- coal furnaces was one of the major industries of India. The Industrial Revolution taught Europe how to carry out these processes more cheaply on a larger scale, and the Indian industry died under the competition... Europe looked upon the Hindus as experts in almost every line of manufacture—wood-work, ivory-work, metal-work, bleaching, dyeing, tanning, soap-making, glass-blowing, gunpowder, fireworks, cement, etc. China imported eyeglasses from India in 1260 A.D.
  • Will Durant, Our Oriental heritage

• “The traditional view, that iron was brought into the subcontinent by invading ‘Aryans’ (Banerjee 1965), is wrong on two counts: there is no evidence of any knowledge of iron in the earliest Vedic texts (Pleiner 1971), where ayas stands either for copper or for metals in general, and the idea that the aryas of the Rigveda were invaders has become just as questionable. Wheeler’s assertion that iron only spread to India with the eastward extension of Achaemenid rule (Wheeler 1962) is even more untenable in the face of radiocarbon dates from early iron-bearing levels. The alternative thesis (Chakrabarti 1977), that iron smelting was developed in the subcontinent, rests on two principal arguments. First, iron ore is found across the length and the breadth of India, outside alluvial plains, in quantities that were certainly viable for exploitation by the primitive methods observable even in this century (Ball 1881; Elwin 1942). Ample opportunities thus existed for experimentation, although given the complexity or iron smelting this is not a conclusive point. The second argument, that the earliest evidence for iron comes from the peninsula and not from the northwest, is much more persuasive, even if better examples than quoted by Chakrabarti can be adduced in support of it. Briefly, while the dating of Phase II of Nagda (the earliest iron bearing level) depends on ceramic analogies, and the stratigraphy of Ahar (another site which is claimed to have produced evidence for iron) is hopelessly muddled, the testimony of radiocarbon dates is instructive. Iron Age levels have yielded dates of 2970 + 105 bp (TF- 570 ) 1255, 1240, 1221 cal. BC and 2820 + 100 bp (TF- 573 ) 993 cal. BC from Hallur, and 2905 + 105 bp (TF- 326 ) 1096 cal. BC and 3130 + 105 bp (TF- 324 ) 1420 cal. BC from Eran. They are not only earlier than any date from the Ganga valley (which dates fall between 2700-2500 bp) but are also earlier than the dates from Pirak in the northwest, with the exception of an anomalous reading of 2970 + 140 (Ly- 1643 ) 1255, 1240, 1221 cal. BC. Since the process of diffusion from the west should produce rather the opposite pattern, a strong case can be made for an indigenous origin of ion smelting, although it could do with further support given the complexity of this industrial process which by common consent renders multiple centers of innovation unlikely.”
  • Erdosy [1995:83-84] . Erdosy, George; 1995; ‘The Prelude to urbanization: ethnicity and the rise of Late Vedic chiefdoms’; in The Archaeology of the Early Historic South Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States, Allchin, F. R. et al (eds.), pg. 75-98; Cambridge University Press; Cambridge; 1995

• There will never be another nation, which understood separate types of swords and their names, than the inhabitants of India…
  • -Al-Biruni (973-1048 AD) quoted in India's legendary wootz steel: an advanced material of the ancient world by Sharada Srinivasan and Srinivasa Ranganathan, 2004

• ‘The workmanship of the native hilts can scarcely be surpassed… The districts of Salem, Koimbatur, and North Arkat, (in Tamil Nadu, are those) in which the best Indian steel has been manufactured from time immemorial…
  • -M. J. Walhouse, 1878 quoted in India's legendary wootz steel: an advanced material of the ancient world by Sharada Srinivasan and Srinivasa Ranganathan, 2004

• ‘..there is a cake which is supposed to be steel from India and the kind to be rated most highly in Egypt. I could find no artisan in Paris who succeeded in forging a tool out of it.’
  • -Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, 1722 cited by A. G. Sisco and C. S. Smith 1956 quoted in India's legendary wootz steel: an advanced material of the ancient world by Sharada Srinivasan and Srinivasa Ranganathan, 2004

• Their (Indians) chemical skill is a fact more striking and more unexpected." "They knew how to prepare sulphuric acid, nitric acid and muratic acid; the oxide of copper, iron, lead (of which they had both the red oxide and litharge), tin and zinc: the suphuret of iron, copper, mercury, and antimony, and arsenic; the sulphate of copper, zinc and iron; and carbonates of lead and iron. Their modes of preparing these substances were sometimes peculiar.
  • (source: History of Hindu Chemistry - By Mountstuart Elphinstone Volume I, Introduction, p. xii and 54). attributed at [1]

• The introduction of iron into the subcontinent by the Indo-Aryans is another dis- carded intruding-Aryan tenet that is no longer accepted by archaeologists: "Archaeo- logically . . . the problem of the Aryans and their association with iron remains as con- fusing as ever, regardless of the earlier strongly expressed theories of their apparently tautological association" (Banerjee 1981, 320). Iron occurs in a number of locations that could not have been influenced by one particular source. Chakrabarti (1993-94) was one of the first to reject the idea that the Iron Age represents a "major social and economic transformation" (25). Questioning the idea of its external origin, he claims that iron appears in the archaeological record without causing any significant cultural break. Here, again, he complains about "the role of the Aryans in this context which seem[s] to have forced scholars into a position where their primary concern has been to correlate the early Indian data on iron to some diffusionary impulses through the north- west" (25).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• Of greater implication is Shaffer's argument (1984a, 49) that during the late third millennium B.C.E. iron ore was recognized and utilized in southern Afghanistan and was manipulated to produce iron luxury items. The fact that there are early Harappan artifacts in the same stratigraphic proveniences as the iron artifacts suggests to him that "the 'Early Harappan' complexes had access to, or knowledge of, an iron technology." In actual fact, although there is no evidence for awareness of smelted iron technology, iron ore and iron items have been uncovered in eight bronze age Harappan sites, some going back to 2600 B.C.E. and earlier. (These will be described in chapter 12.) So there was as awareness of iron, which may have been encountered accidently during the smelting of copper, and a willingness to exploit it. The Harappan awareness of iron ore cannot be considered an "iron age," which is when smelted iron items became common items of household use and occurred around 1000 B.C.E. According to Possehl (1999b), "the iron age is more of a continuation of the past then a break with it" (165). Moreover, iron tools did not "lead to the subjugation of indigenous population by invading warriors" (164). In any event, Shaffer concludes with a complaint that has become stan- dard for South Asian archaeologists: "Ideas of invasions, diffusions, and conquests have obscured and hindered investigation into the region's indigenous cultural processes. To fully understand and appreciate the various solutions to cultural problems recorded in the South Asian archaeological record, alternative explanatory frameworks must be considered" (59).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• However, there is a more important datable item that is first mentioned in the Atharvaveda (11.3.7; 9.5.4) and again in the Satapatha Brahmana: krsna ayas, 'black metal/bronze' namely, iron. Smelted iron first appears in the archaeological record in a variety of places by the thirteenth to tenth century B.C.E.—including the Deccan (Chakrabarti [1997a] notes that the iron in inner India is attested earlier than in the northwestern borderlands). The mention of iron in these texts is as solid a chronological indicator as one can expect in the reconstruction of protohistory and cannot be cursorily dismissed. Moreover, the dates for iron in India are in sync with the dates for this metal attested in central Asia and Iran: if anything, the Indian context is the earliest and most likely to have influenced the others (Koshelenko 1986, 73).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

• While there is no evidence of smelted iron in Harappa, iron ore has been found in eight sites, and household items have been made from it. In Mundigak, five iron items dated between 2600 and 2100 B.c.E.6 were found, including a copper/bronze bell with an iron clapper, two iron "but- tons" on a copper/bronze rod, an iron button on a copper/bronze mirror, and two indistinct lumps of "carbonates of iron" (Possehl 1999b, 159). Some of these seem to be items of everyday use. Other sites have revealed: Said Qala Tepe, "ferrous lumps' (2700-2300 B.C.E.); Ahar two iron arrow heads (ca. 1 275 B.C.E.); Chanhu-Daro, an "iron artifact" (context questionable); Mohenjo-Daro, some lollingite (an iron bearing mineral that may have been used in copper smelting); Lothal, a fragmentary piece of metal (2500-1800 B.C.E.); and Katelai Graveyard in the Swat Valley, a single piece of iron (1500-1800). In actual fact, it has even yet to be discounted that some of these might have been even smelted: "None has been analyzed to determine their technical properties and we do not known which of them is meteroic and which (if any) were smelted" (Possehl, 1999b).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12