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 (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.

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

A

• 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.
  • Atharvaveda, XI, 3, 7-8, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1895–6), a glorification of the Odana or oblation of boiled rice

• 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.
  • Ramayana, II, 63, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1870–4)

• 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.
  • Ramayana, II, 96, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1870–4)

• 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.
  • Ramayana, III, 55, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1870–4)

• 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.
  • Ramayana, III, 59, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1870–4)

• 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.
  • Muhammad al-Idrisi, as translated in Meenakshi Jain, The India they Saw, vol. 2 (2011), p. 108; see also: J. V Kain, Trade and Traders in Western India (1990), p. 69; A. Wink, Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1, pp. 60ff

B

• 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

R

• 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.
  • René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, L'Art de convertir le fer forgé en acier, et l'art d'adoucir le fer fondu (1722), translated by A. G. Sisco and C. S. Smith, Reaumur's Memoirs on Steel and Iron (1956). Quoted as an epigraph in India's Legendary Wootz Steel by Sharada Srinivasan and Srinivasa Ranganathan (2004), ch. 6

S

• The working with wootz is so difficult, that it is a separate art from that of forging iron.
  • Dr. Scott, of Bombay, quoted by George Pearson, "Experiments and Observations to Investigate the Nature of a Kind of Steel, Manufactured at Bombay, and There Called Wootz...", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 85 (January 1795), p. 323

W

• 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.