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History of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent

aspect of history

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 (lit. 'metal; copper; iron'). 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.

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. ~ Will Durant
No iron is comparable to the Indian one in sharpness. ~ Muhammad al-Idrisi


Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · From Hindu texts · See also · External links

B

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  • There will never be another nation, which understood separate types of swords and their names, than the inhabitants of India...
    • Al-Biruni, quoted as an epigraph in India's Legendary Wootz Steel by Sharada Srinivasan and Srinivasa Ranganathan (2004), ch. 4
  • Archaeologically . . . the problem of the Aryans and their association with iron remains as confusing as ever, regardless of the earlier strongly expressed theories of their apparently tautological association.
    • About earlier theories that the use of iron was introduced by migrating Indo-Aryans.
    • Banerjee, N. R. 1981. "The Use of Iron in the 2nd Millennium B.C. and Its Bearing on the Aryan Problem." In Ethnic Problems of the History of Central Asia in the Early Period (311- 320). Moscow: Hayka, page 320 quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9
  • The mention of iron in [Hindu] 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.
    • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

D

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  • 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.
  • 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 charcoal 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...

E

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  • 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.
    • Mountstuart Elphinstone. History of Hindu Chemistry - By Mountstuart Elphinstone Volume I, Introduction, p. xii and 54. Quoted at [1]
  • The traditional view, that iron was brought into the subcontinent by invading ‘Aryans’, is wrong on two counts: there is no evidence of any knowledge of iron in the earliest Vedic texts, 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.
    • 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, page 83-84, also quoted in What is the Aryan Migration Theory? by V. Agarwal.

I

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  • The Indians are very good at making various compounds of mixtures of substances with the help of which they melt the malleable iron; it then turns into Indian iron, and is called after al-Hind. There, in al-Hind, are workshops where swords are manufactured, and their craftsmen make excellent ones surpassing those made by other peoples. In the same way, the Sindi, Sarandibi and the Baynimani iron vie with one another for superiority as regards the climate of the place, skill in industry, the method of melting and stamp­ing and beauty in polishing and scouring. But no iron is comparable to the Indian one in sharpness.

R

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S

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W

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  • 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, "Archaeological Notes: The Old Tanjore Armoury", Indian Antiquary, 7 (1878), pp. 192-96; quoted as an epigraph in India's Legendary Wootz Steel by Sharada Srinivasan and Srinivasa Ranganathan (2004), ch. 5.

From Hindu texts

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  • Gods, doing holy acts, devout, resplendent, smelting like ore their human generations.
    • Rigveda, IV, 2, 17, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1896)
  • Grey iron is its flesh, copper its blood. Tin is its ashes, gold its colour, the blue lotus flower its scent.
  • That foremost one of Dasarha's race also gave unto Subhadra as her peculium ten carrier-loads of first class gold possessing the splendour of fire, some purified and some in a state of ore.
    • Mahabharata, 223, translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli (1883–96)
  • The fallen rain, and falling still,
    Hung like a sheet on every hill,
    Till, with glad deer, each flooded steep
    Showed glorious as the mighty deep.
    The torrents down its wooded side
    Poured, some unstained, while others dyed
    Gold, ashy, silver, ochre, bore
    The tints of every mountain ore.
  • His finger on the rock he laid,
    Which veins of sanguine ore displayed,
    And painted o'er his darling's eyes
    The holy sign in mineral dyes.
  • He led the mournful lady where
    Resplendent gold adorned the stair,
    And showed each lattice fair to see
    With silver work and ivory:
    Showed his bright chambers, line on line,
    Adorned with nets of golden twine.
  • If Janak's child be mine no more,
    In splendour fair as virgin ore,
    The lordship of the skies and earth
    To me were prize of little worth.
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