[378] Mr. Day (quoting Fergusson’s Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan, London, 1848) cautions his readers that ‘Mr. Fergusson’s dates are not to be relied on, however important his writings unquestionably are in other respects’ (p. 168). Here again we see the misleading influence of the Sanskritists, who have allowed themselves to be cozened by the ‘mild Hindu.’ Mr. Day inclines (p. 151) to the tenth century b.c. (!), when the peoples of India were, we have reason to believe, the merest savages.

[379] The modern Hindus call steel Paldah, from the Persian Pulád, the Arab. Fulád. They apply to Spanish steel the terms Ispát, Sukhela and Tolad. Their favourite trial of Sword-metal is with a bar of soft gold, which should leave a streak.

[380] Colonel Yule does not consider the word genuine, and with reason, as the Indo-Phœnician (‘Safá’) alphabet has no w and no z. The word first appears in ‘Experiments and Observations to investigate the Nature of a Kind of Steel manufactured at Bombay, and there called Wootz,’ ... by G. Pearson, M.D. (paper read before the Royal Soc., June 11, 1795). He notes that ‘Dr. Scott of Bombay, in a letter to the President, acquainted him that he had sent over “specimens of a substance known by the name of wootz, which is considered to be a kind of steel, and is in high esteem among the Indians”’ (p. 322). In Wilkinson’s Engines of War (1841) we read (pp. 203–206), ‘The cakes of steel are called wootz.’

Dr. E. Balfour states that uchhá and níchhá (in Hindustani ‘high’ and ‘low’) are used in the Canarese provinces to denote superior and inferior descriptions of articles, and that Wootz may be a corruption of the former. Colonel Yule and his coadjutor in the Glossary of Indian Terms, the late lamented Dr. Burnell, hold that it originated in some clerical error or misreading, perhaps from wook representing the Canarese ukku = steel.

[381]

C.{combined

1·333

uncombined

0·312

Si.

0·045

S.

0·181

As.

0·037

Fe. (by difference)

98·092

100·000

Phillips, Metallurgy, p. 317. Faraday found in Wootz 0·0128–0·0695 per cent. of aluminium, and attributed the ‘damask’ of the blades to its presence. Karsten, after three experiments, and Mr. T. H. Henry, failed to detect it, and suggested that it may have been derived from intermingled slag containing silicate of alumina (Percy, Iron, &c. pp. 183–84).

[382] Archiv. Port. Oriental. fascic. iii. p. 318.

[383] M. Keller (Pres. Soc. Ant. Switz.) notes that crudely formed lumps and quadrangular blocks of malleable iron, double pyramids weighing 10–16 lbs., have been found in prehistoric sites. They were probably produced in primitive Catalans. Pieces of iron slag worked by the Kelts were discovered in 1862 on the Cheviot Hills.

[384] The cupel (of old copel) is the French coupelle, little coupe. The muffle is a metal cupel.