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.

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A

• Grey iron is its flesh, copper its blood. Tin is its ashes, gold its colour, the blue lotus flower its scent.
  • The Hymns of the Atharvaveda, tr. by Ralph T.H. Griffith [1895-6], XI 3, 7-8 [1]

• 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 stamp­ ing 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
  • Maqbul Ahmad, Al-Idrisi, p. 23., quoted in Wink A, Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume 1,60ff

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