Indian Antiquary Vol 34

SR No.: 032526
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 548
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 267

OCTOBER, 1905.] THE COPPER AGE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS IN INDIA. 239
through an aperture at the narrow end. The Pâchamba or Karharbári find permits of no doubt that in Bengal roughly cast blooms' of copper were knocked into shape as celta by hammering. The more highly-finished articles from Northern India and Gangeria were, no doubt, made in regular moulds and merely finished with the hammer. There is therefore no reason for hesitating to believe that the Indian examples, like "all the copper implements known to science" in the Old World, were produced by casting in the first instance, however much they may bave been hammered afterwards. But no moulds have been discovered in India up to the present time. The British Museum possesses flat open moulds of stone from Dorset, Northumberland, and Spain, unsuited for casting anything but unalloyed copper. (Read, p. 71.)
The silver objects, 102 in number, found along with the copper implements at Gungeris, and obviously contemporary with them, comprised two classes, bull's head plates and disks. Eight of the former and four of the latter are in the Calcutta Museum, and one specimen of each in the Dublin Museum is shown in Plate V. Dr. Anderson's detailed description of one of the bulls' heads may be quoted :
" Ca. 23. — A thin plate of silver resembling the outline of the front of a bull's head, " the lateral downwardly curved processes corresponding to the ears, no horns being repre"sented. The lower half of one of the processes is contracted and expanded three times, the " tip forming & narrow termination to the last dilatation. In these details the processes do not “ resemble horns. This plate is about the thickness of ordinary paper; and it measures 4".65 "in length, with a maximum breadth across the processes of nearly 6."
The plates of this class vary considerably in size and the details of form. The dimensions of the soven other Calcutta specimens are as follows:
Ga. 24. - 4.60 X 6", with notch at top.
25.-4":10 x 59.50. , 26. — 39.90 5.60.
89.90 x 5"80. 28. - 3" x 5'40, with notch and finely tapering ears. . 29. -.05 x 5:40.
» 30.- 2.80 x 1.10. The disks are plain, except for slight ornamentation of the edge on some specimens, and vary in size. The details of the four Calcutta specimens are as follows:-- Ga. 81. -A thin silver disk, slightly concave and crimped at the margin.
Diameter 5.25; „ 82.- Diameter 4".80; 38. -
4160; 84.- A fragment, 30-40 x 2.90, the border being stamped with a line of
little dots. The British Museum specimens also exhibit variations in detail. The example figured by Mr. Read (op. cit. fig. 42) has a simple rope ornament round the edge. Both the 'bulls' heads' and disks were evidently intended to be attached to larger bodies as ornaments, but it is difficult to guess their exact use. When they were exhibited in Calcutta the suggestion was made that the bulls' heads' were designed to serve as ornaments for cattle, similar plates of copper being sometimes still used by Hindus for the adornment of dedicated bulls or cows. Another conjecture is that both the balls' heads and disks were personal ornaments.
The fact that silver articles formed part of the Gungeria deposit has sometimes been supposed to indicate a comparatively late date for the accompanying copper implements, which would otherwise, on the strength of European data, be ascribed to a time about 1800 or 2000 B. C. But there is no reason to doubt that silver may have been known in Northern India As early as 2000 B. O., although, according to Professor Macdonell, the name of the metal does not occur in the Rig Veda. Silver is one of the metals known from very ancient times, as is