Indian Antiquary Vol 36

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 61

MARCH, 1907.) THE COPPER AGE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS IN INDIA.
58
THE COPPER AGE AND PREHISTORIC BRONZE IMPLEMENTS OF INDIA -
SUPPLEMENT. BY VINCENT A, SMITH, M.A., L.C.B. (Red.)
(Continued from Vol. XXXIV. p. 244.) T PROPOSE in this short article to complete my review of the present state of knowledge
concerning the copper age and prehistoric bronze implements of India by utilizing somo materials which were not at my command last year.
In December 1904 Dr. Vogel, acting under instructions from the Director-General of Archæology, deputed his Assistant, Pandit Hirananda, to examine the site at Rajpur in the Bijnaur District, U. P., and to obtain photographs of copper or bronze implements reputed to exist at Bithor or Brahmavartta in the Cawnpore District, and at Pariar on the opposite bank of the Ganges in the Unâo District of Oadh. The Rajpur implements are fully illustrated in Plate I. of my former article. The photographs of the site, which Dr. Vogel has kindly sent me, show that it is a piece of waste ground adjoining a grove, and marked by & mound or tumalus, apparently of earth, a few feet in height. There is nothing eafficiently characteristic in the appearance of the spot to justify the expense of reproducing the photographs.
The town of Bithor is situated on the Ganges, twelve miles to the north-west of Cawapore. Local legend affirms that the god Brahmâ celebrated his completion of the work of creation by a horse-sacrifice at the Brahmâvartta Ghât. Dr. Führer states that numbers of anoient metal arrow-points are found in the soil around Bithur, said to be relics of the time of Ramachandra' (Monum. Antiq., N.-W. P. and Oudh, p. 168). By 'arrow-points' Dr. Führer meant the large objects which are more properly described as "harpoon-beads. Two specimens of this class and two "flat celts' of primitive lithic type in the Lucknow Museum have been illustrated in Plate IV. of my former paper. The photographs supplied by Dr. Vogel (Plate VI.) now illustrate fourteen more objects from the same site. One of these is a barpoon or spear-head, with three points on each side below the blade, and the rest may be called varying forms of celts. Four of these with broad rounded edges are slightly shouldered, and nearly related to the Midnâpar speciinen previously figured in my Plate II., fig. 6. The narrow celts are obviously copies of common forms of stone implements. The bent implement, figured at the end of the top row of Plate VI., is a new form, bat a daplicate of it occurs at Pariâr (Plate VII.). Presumably all these Bithûr specimens are made of copper, not bronze, but without analysis it is impossible to be certain what their composition is. Dr. Vogel's Assistant has failed to report where the fourteen objects now photographed are preserved, but probably thoy are kept in a temple or temples.
Pari&r is a village in the Unão District of Oudh, on the Ganges, opposite Bithûr, fourteen miles to the north-west of Unão, as indicated in the Map to my former article. Like Bithur, it is sanctified by Brahmanical legends of the usual kind, and is frequented as a bathing-place. The great jhil or swamp, which almost surrounds the village, is called Mahni, and probably represents an old river-bed. In the temple of Sõmêsvara Mahadeva on the banks of the jhil are collected a large number of metal arrow-heads said to have been used by the contending armies (of Lava and Kusa, sons of Ramachandra]; they are also occasionally picked up in the bed of the jhil and of the Ganges' (Führer, op. cit. p. 272, erroneously printed as 172 in my former paper, p. 237). The photographs now published evidently are those of implements preserved in the Pariậr temple ( Plate VII. ). One implement, as already observed, is a shouldered celt like four specimens from Bithûr and one from Midnâpar, and another is a peculiar bent tool resembling a Bithûr specimen, and, I think, new to science. The pandit unluckily omitted