Although the richness and variety of India’s metallurgical history has by and large remained outside the general historical perception of the land or been confined essentially to generalizations about the impact of the introduction of iron on agriculture, the abundance of her mineral resources, the richness of her pre-industrial metallurgical tradition, the antiquity and abundance of her ancient metal objects and the still unexplored dimension of her ancient mines should mark out India as a great metallurgical centre of antiquity. The investigation of this history is much more than trying to determine if particular textual terms meant particular metals or set down the nature of government controls over mining and metals on the basis of the Arthasastra. Basically, it is a matter of focusing on ancient mining and metallurgy as specific research problems not merely in archaeology but also in geology, metal sciences, ethnography and history. However, not a single excavation in the subcontinent has been undertaken with the issue of ancient metallurgy in mind. Geological research on the distribution of various metals has no doubt been a serious concern of various relevant national bodies, but the resources which, despite their modern commercial unsuitability, would have been adequate for pre-industrial smelting and the locations and characters of innumerable pre-modern mining shafts have escaped systematic attention in the field. Public sector organizations like Hindustan Copper or Hindustan Zinc could at least have set up units (however small) to study the traces of ancient mining and mineral production in the areas under their control. But for a handful, material scientists in India have not been concerned with the scientific analysis of ancient artefacts. In view of the vast mass of ethnographic data available in the British Indian documents on the production of both metals and metallic artefacts and the continuity of various metal-based craft traditions in various parts of the subcontinent, the ethnographic under-standing of the ancient data is also very significant in the Indian context. Historically, the production and the economic organization of metals and metalcrafts in some metal-rich areas of the subcontinent (cf. Rajasthan) before the coming of the British should tell us a lot about the traditional way of organizing metal industry.6 On their part, archaeologists have been un-mindful of the rich possibilities of investigation from all these points of view.
In recent years there have been several historical syntheses of the available material utilizing different types of sources, but as a scholar has commented, ‘there is a certain sterility both of new material as well as of new ideas and approaches.’7 There is much truth in this comment. Archaeologists can study the material basically from the point of view of its archaeological implications but they are ill-equipped to handle the specific questions of metallurgy or the implications of specific metallurgical features of ancient artefacts. That a proper history of the use of different metals in India can be written only through a proper synthesis of geological, archaeological, literary and ethnographic data was understood early in the twentieth century by a chemist, P. Neogi. However, the tradition set by him was soon lost in Indian archaeological literature. The present author and his associates have offered through their publications a consolidation and updating of Neogi’s approach, with detailed comments on some major related archaeological issues. The other publications in the field are either technical studies of individual situations and artefacts without a proper archaeological and historical perspective or general essays biased towards literary data. The matter rests here at the moment but it is important that we go beyond it.
Copper metallurgy was effectively established at Mehrgarh in Period III (crucibles with metal sticking to them), c. late fifth/early fourth millennium BC. By the close of the fourth millennium BC, the knowledge of copper and copper-related metallurgy, gold and silver became widespread: copper (with lead and nickel alloying), lead, arsenic and silver at Nal in Baluchistan in the middle of the fourth millennium, the extensive development of copper metallurgy in the Aravallis by the end of this millennium, and some areas around it about this time (cf. Dholavira in Kutch, Kunal in Haryana). There is a possibility of deliberate lead and arsenic alloying to the extent of 1 per cent in two analysed specimens from Ganeshwar in the Aravallis. It appears that by this time the major copper sources of the area in Baluchistan, Rajasthan-Haryana and Gujarat were known and used: the Las Bela source of copper in Baluchistan, lead in south-central Baluchistan, the Aravalli source in Rajasthan-Haryana and the Amba Mata source, in Gujarat. The major problem is the big spread in the Aravallis: the profusion of both Ganeshwar-type sites and artefacts in this region, along with the fact that this growth apparently took place in the context of a microlith-using level which was a continuation of the earlier true mesolithic level. The evidence both from Ganeshwar and Bagor (possibly Langhnaj as well) is unambiguous on this point. The establishment of the Aravallis as one of the oldest and long-standing areas of ancient Indian metallurgy and the realization that it played a major role in the origin of the Indus civilization by being a major element in the intensification of craft activities before its beginning must be considered a major step forward in the archaeology of this period.
Given their background and the complex economic life of the civilization, it is no wonder that the craftsmen of the mature Harappan civilization were adept in making not merely a wide range of artefacts but also in using an extensive series of alloys: tin, arsenic, lead, nickel, tin and arsenic, tin and lead, arsenic and lead, tin and nickel, lead and nickel, and finally, zinc. Tin was the most widely used alloy, but it is the pure copper tradition which dominated. This fits in with the continuing tradition of ritual purity of pure copper vessels among Indian craftsmen.
On the whole there is absolutely no reason why the Harappan craftsmen had to import any metal or metallic ore from anywhere beyond the Hindukush. The north of Afghanistan could have played a role in supplying tin, but in the Tosham area of Haryana, which is right in the middle of Harappan distribution, there is an extensive deposit of tin. As far as the typology of Harappan copper objects is concerned, types like spiral-headed pins, which were once championed as west Asiatic imports, are now being found to have been very much a part of the subcontinental complex from Manda in Jammu to Ganeshwar in Rajasthan and Inamgaon (early Jorwe level) and Daimabad (late Harappan level) in Maharashtra. It is also clear that some of the basic techniques and style of modern Indian craft tradition in copper and its alloys (including the dhokra tradition) and gold and silver jewellery go back to the Indus civilization context.
Another major development has been the realization that the Rajasthan-Haryana zone of copper metallurgy supplied finished tools and other products to Malwa and Maharashtra in the neolithic–chalcolithic context. The Aravalli zone signature is clear on the copper celts from Kayatha and we believe that the specimens of the late Harappan ‘Daimabad hoard’ went there from the same region. In the case of the upper Gangetic valley ‘copper hoards’, now identifiable with the OCP tradition of late Harappan affinity, the linkage is clearly towards the Rajasthan-Haryana zone of metallurgy. What is perhaps more significant is the spread of this tradition ‘Outside their core area, over a wide geographical area involving Gujarat, the Deccan and southernmost reaches of Tamilnadu.’
We believe that the specimens from Mehsana in Gujarat, Navdatoli, Chandoli, Kallur, Moongalar and Ramanathapuram belong to the same strain and are spread along clearly defined routes linking these areas with northern Rajasthan and southern Haryana.8
The picture of metallurgy in east India is not particularly varied or early; by the first half of the second millennium BC copper metallurgy seems to be secure (cf. Senuar with its crucible; flat axe from Mahishdal), although that is no reason to place the Chhotanagpur plateau and West Bengal ‘copper hoard’ finds so early. They dated certainly from the historic periods. More interesting is the opening up of the tin source of the Chhotanagpur plateau in the second millennium (Sonpur in Bihar, Bahiri in West Bengal) BC. Copper-smelting occurs in the chalcolithic context at Golbai in Orissa and should date from the second millennium BC High arsenic alloying from the early first millennium BC context at Sankarjang in Orissa is interesting and suggests a separate strain of copper metallurgy. The source of tin in a copper object of the neolithic level of Brahmagiri in Karnataka is interesting too. Unless some local source was used, there is a possibility that the rich deposit of tin in Bastar came to be exploited by this time. But as no archaeological research has been done in Bastar with this proposition in mind, nothing positive can really be said in the matter.
High tin alloying, which has survived in Kerala, was certainly a part of the Indus civilization tradition (examples of more than 20 per cent tin alloying from Kuntasi and Mohenjodaro). This point has been missed by S. Srinivasan and I. Glover in their technological study of the surviving Kerala tradition.9 However, this tradition is more marked and widespread in early historic India from Taxila to the Asura graves of eastern India and the Nilgiri graves of Tamil Nadu. Occasionally, the tradition may also be observed among later images and coins. A distinct feature of the early historic context is the production of brass (cf. Taxila).
A major development in the study of ancient Indian metallurgy since the mid-1970s has been the mounting evidence of the early antiquity of iron technology in different parts of the subcontinent: Gufkral megalithic in Kashmir, Ahar Ib and Ic in Rajasthan, iron as a part of the continuing chalcolithic black-and-red ware sequence in eastern India, iron as a part of the continuing chalcolithic pottery sequence in Malwa, iron with early megalithic graves at Hallur and Kumaranahalli, iron with the pre-painted grey ware, black-and-red ware level at Jakhera, iron in the black-and-red ware context at Raja Nal-ka-Tila in Sonbhadra district, UP, and finally, an ‘iron object’ in the Harappan context at Lothal. The combined evidence is unequivocal enough to suggest that right from the early part of the second millennium BC there was a steady growth in the familiarity with iron in different parts of the subcontinent and that towards the closing centuries of the second millennium BC it was inducted into the economy of the Ganga plain. The fact that early historic urban growth in this region was not possible till several centuries later is sure enough indication of the fact that the impact of iron on the economy was slow.