Jainism in Bihar

Author(s): P C Roy Choudhary
Publisher: P C Roy Choudhary Patna

Page 78

mineralogist, wrote fifty years ago : "In spite of the rudeness of the mode of extraction, the work must be admitted to have been sagaciously conducted. The ancients never went deep, sometimes hindered by the water, which everywhere is reached below the level of the valleys sometimes by the fear of working underground. The use of powder in blasting must have been unknown to the people of that time, for I everywhere found in the old works, where open, single pillars undisturbed, very rich in ore, but in such hard rock as only to be won by blasting. The ancients seemed to have smelted the ore in little furnaces on the spot, for one finds remains of walls, heaps of slag, and even copper bloom in many places. It is impossible to determine the age of the old workings, the heaps and fallen-in-pits are mostly overgrown by thick jungle and covered by old trees; only here and there one finds large openings in the rock, at present the refuge of crowds of bats, whose dung covers the floor more than a foot deep; the cavity itself being converted into a beautiful green hall by a thick crust of malachite."
"If one asks the inhabitants when such work was in progress, they do not know; they speak of 100 years with the vague ideas of Asiatics about time, representing thereby an arbitrarily long period. It seems to me, however, certain that the present balf-wild inhabitants are not in a condition to carry out such works, and these may be the relics of an ancient civilization, like the rock temples of the neighbouring Orissa, like the fruit tree (mango and tamarind) that one often finds as very old trees in the middle of the thickest forest; as again the remains of the great Dalmi, which once stood in the thick woods of the Subarparekba. Only one story has reached me of the ancient mines. Wherefrom the lofty Siddheswar, the ridges of Bindraban, Ruamgarh and Mahadeo descend into the valleys as spurs, one finds on Bindraban extensive old diggings and pits, and on Ruamgarh slag-heaps and remains of brick walls. There at Ramgar a 62