216. Iron Pillar at the Kutub, Delhi. From a photograph.
One of the most curious and interesting illustrations of this is found in the existence of the celebrated iron pillar of Dhava, in the courtyard of the mosque at the Kutub, near Delhi. This consists of a solid shaft of wrought iron, standing 22 feet 6 inches out of the ground and is 5 feet 6 inches in circumference at about 5 feet from its base. When I visited it, the report was that Colonel Baird Smith had dug down and found its base 16 feet below the surface. Lieutenant Cole[568] now brings home a report that it is 26 feet deep in the ground. Taking, however, the more moderate dimension, a single forging nearly 40 feet long and 5 feet circumference was not made, and could not have been made, in any country of Europe before the introduction of steam-machinery, nor, indeed, before the invention of the Nasmyth hammer.
There is an inscription on the pillar which, unfortunately, bears no date; but from the form of the characters, the nature of the event it describes,[569] coupled with the architecture of the capital of the pillar, it leaves no doubt that it was erected in the third or fourth century of our era.
It must be left to those practically skilled in the working of metals to explain how any human being could work in close proximity to such a mass heated to a welding heat, or how it was possible without steam-machinery to manipulate so enormous a bar of iron. The question that interests us here is, how long must the Hindus have been familiar with the use of iron and the mode of working it before they could conceive the idea of such a monument and carry it into execution? It could hardly have been centuries, it must have been nearer thousands of years, and yet they erect rude-stone monuments in India at the present day![570]
One other instance, at the lower end of the scale, may be quoted as also bearing directly on this subject. Of all the people of India the Khassias are probably the most expert in extracting iron from its ores and manufacturing it when made; and their mode of doing this is so original, and, though rude, so effective, that there can be no doubt that it is the result of long experience among themselves.[571] They have, in fact, practised the art from time immemorial; yet though possessing iron tools for, it may be, thousands of years, they at the present day adhere to the practice of using rude unhewn-stone monuments, like the Jews, in preference to those "which any iron tool had touched at any time."[572] Nor can it be argued that they do this because they do not know better. As just mentioned, at any time, certainly within the last thousand years, they might have seen the Buddhist or Hindu stonemasons of Kamarupa erecting the most elaborately carved stone temples, and can now see the domes of the mosques which the Mahommedans erected in the cities of Sylhet three or four centuries ago.
217. Sculpture on under side of Cap-stone of a Nilgiri Dolmen.