INTRODUCTION.
My object in preparing this series of monographs is to study the knowledge of the ancient Hindus of the different metals and their compounds from ancient Sanskrit literature, medical and non-medical, and also from analytical, archæological and minera- logical sources. Dr. P. C. Ray, in his well-known History of Hindu Chemistry," has collected a large amount of medical or rather medico-chemical Sanskrit literature bearing on the know- ledge of the Hindus of the metals and their compounds, but I would like to submit that there are other sources, specially non- medical Sanskritic and archaeological literature, which would throw considerable light on the subject. It is my desire to bring together in a connected form the information on all these heads as far as practicable so that a more detailed history of Hindu Chem- istry may be written afterwards.
So far as the present monograph is concerned, it embodies in an enlarged form a lecture delivered on the 7th January, 1914, at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Dr. P. C. Ray presiding. I have attempted to discuss at con- siderable length the question whether iron was known in the Vedic Age, and I hope I have been able to prove that the use of iron was perfectly known to the first Aryan settlers in India. Such a discussion might throw some light on the vexed question of the prior use of iron and bronze, though so far as India is concerned there was no bronze age, as bronze weapons are scarcely to be found in India. As regards archaeological evidence, ancient specimens of iron are so very abundant in India that an enumera- tion of these alone will convince any one that India has always been a rich iron-producing country. The great iron pillar at Delhi is well known to all, but I would like to draw prominent attention of all students of science to the other two less-known iron pillars, viz. the one at Dhar, which is nearly twice as big as the Delhi pillar, and the other on Mount Abu. Nor must we lose sight of the gigantic iron beams at Konarak, recently brought to full view from drift sea-sand in which many remained buried for two or three centuries, as well as of the numerous iron beams
