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New Indian Express
Sunday, August 31, 2005

Made in India

Nanditha Krishna

[Review of the recent book:
_India's Legendary Woots Steel:
An Advanced Material of the Ancient World_
by Sharada Srinivasan & Srinivasa Ranganathan,
National Institute of Advanced Studies
& Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore]

Did you know that the famous Damascus sword and Toledo blade
were made of Indian steel? Or that the gift King Porus gave to
Alexander in the fourth century BC was Ferrum Candidum, believed
to be steel? Or that Pliny, writing in the first century BC,
says that iron was imported from ‘‘Seres’’ (Cheras)? The list of
surprising facts is endless. What is shocking is that we Indians
know so little about such an important ancient industry of
India.

India’s Legendary Wootz Steel, written by Sharada Srinivasan and
Srinivasa Ranganathan, corrects this lacuna and gives us a
fascinating picture of the Indian steel industry. It is a
well-researched yet easy-to-read book that brings scholarship to
a popular level.

Wootz is a form of crucible steel, formed by adding large
quantities of carbon to iron. This results in alternating
layered light and dark etched patterns, created by welding
layers of lower and higher carbon steel. The design came to be
known as damask, referring to the watered pattern, and thereby
Damascus. Today the word ‘‘Damascus’’ is applied to patterns in
integrated circuits with copper interconnects. Wootz was the
western name for high carbon steel from India, derived from the
Kannada ukku and Sangam Tamil ekku, meaning crucible steel.

The Iron Pillar of Delhi (AD 400) and the lesser-known iron
pillar at Kochadri in Karnataka and the iron beams of the Konark
temple - the latter two situated in humid coastal areas - stand
testimony to ancient Indian knowledge of corrosion resistance.

By 1100 BC, iron was in use in South Indian megalithic cultures,
from Adichanallur in the South to Vidarbha in the North.
Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu was a hub of ferrous crucible processing
by 300 BC. The southern peninsula became the centre of this
vibrant and growing steel industry, which attracted traders from
Rome and the Middle East. By AD 300, the Alexandrian alchemist
Zosimos of Panapolis had published an unequivocal reference to
Indian crucible steel. The pattern-welded crucible steel
manufactured in India was used by the European Merovingians,
Carolingians and even the Vikings between AD 500 and 800.

There are several admiring accounts of ‘‘Seres’’ iron and
‘‘Teling’’ (Telenga) swords, named after the trading ports, in
early Greek, Roman, and medieval Persian and Arabic accounts.
The Roman Pliny, Periplus of the Aegean Sea and the Arab Aus
Hajr wrote in admiration of the Damascus sword. Just as Indian
numerals, zero and decimal system were taken to the West by the
Arabs, the ‘‘unparalleled’’ Indian tradition of manufacturing
steel came to be known as Hindvi or Hinduwani steel. Even the
Prophet Mohammed was said to have used a ‘‘Teling’’ sword.

But it was during the Crusades that the Damascus sword wowed the
European world. It was immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in The
Talisman, where Richard the Lion Heart and Saladin meet in a
fictionalised account and show off the superiority of their
swords. Richard slices a one-and-a-half inch thick steel bar
with a single stroke. Saladin picks up his wootz Damascus sword
and sliced a down silk pillow into two parts; he then hangs his
shawl on his sword, throws it up in the air, and cuts it into
two.

Not all weapons were made in India. Often, steel ingots were
exported for the product to be fashioned elsewhere. In 1657,
Niccolao Manucci recorded that India had exported over 10,000
pounds of steel. In 1722, Reaumur described ‘‘steel from India.
rated most highly in Egypt. I could find no artisan in Paris who
succeeded in forging a tool out of it’’.

After the 17th century, European travellers to India faithfully
recorded the production of crucible steel. These included
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1679), Francis Buchanan (1807), H W
Voysey (1832) and others who travelled to Mysore, Malabar,
Salem, Trichy and Golconda. There was a brisk trade in wootz
ingots between Golconda and Persia during the reign of the Qutb
Shahi kings. The Mughal and Rajput armouries included watered
and pattern-welded Damascus swords. According to Buchanan, Tipu
paid three panams for a maund of crucible steel. In fact he went
further and manufactured rockets that were also sent to Britain
along with the wootz. In 1870, Major M J Walhouse mentions
Arunachalam of Salem, a highly reputed ironsmith.

The composition of wootz excited the European mind. George
Pearson, in 1795, reported on wootz steel, followed by Mushet in
1804, who was the first to conclude correctly that there was
more carbon in wootz than in English steel. In the 19th century,
Michael Faraday, the discoverer of electricity and a materials
scientist, along with James Stoddart, a chemical assistant at
the Royal Institution at London, undertook the earliest
experiments to analyse wootz.

Although the authors do not mention it, the British and the East
India Company went about deliberately and systematically
destroying the indigenous Indian steel industry, after acquiring
its technology, in order to boost their own factories in
Birmingham, callously reducing the traditional Indian steel
workers to penury.

The book also contains Sharada’s own discovery of high-carbon
wootz steel, with light and dark wavy etched damask patterns at
Melsiruvalur in Tamil Nadu. It carries her to the age of the
Tamil poetess Auvaiyar, who composed poetry about the spears of
the warrior Anci. Ferrous crucible processes are found in sites
dating back to the third century BC at Kodumanal near
Coimbatore. Examples from Gatihosahalli in Mysore, Machnur and
Tintini in Karnataka were similar to the Melsiruvalur sample.
The tradition of smelting iron thrives among the Agaria tribe of
Central India, extensively documented by anthropologist Verrier
Elwin. It is interesting that the production of steel continues
in many of the ancient sites of wootz-making such as Salem,
Mysore and Telengana.

This book is a fascinating combination of history and
technology, and it is supplemented by colourful paintings
recreating some of the scenes where wootz was used. It is a
trailblazer in popular archaeo-metallurgy, a new science in this
country. That two eminent research institutions have come
forward to publish the book, and that Tata Steel has
commissioned it, is commendable indeed.

nankrishna@...