326 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



thinks it possible, also, that the " Indian brass, as white as silver," 

 mentioned by the poet Krinagoras, a contemporary of Strabo, and 

 the " white iron," of which 100 talents were presented, by the 

 Oxydraceee and Malli, to Alexander, at the junction of the five 

 Punjaub rivers, may both have been Chinese alloys of nickel. 

 With reference to the latter, I venture to suggest that it may have 

 been Indian steel, or so-called wootz, 1 which we know in the earliest 

 times was a substance considered worthy of being presented to 

 kings. Indian white iron, as contrasted with black iron, was men- 

 tioned by Homer. Rather than suggest that this Indian white 

 iron, supposing it not to have been steel, was not the produce of 

 India itself, I would name two other alternatives — one being that 

 it was zinc, or an alloy of that metal, derived from the above- 

 described mines ; secondly, if it really was an alloy of nickel, I 

 think it just barely possible that both it and the material of the 

 Bactrian coins may have been derived from certain mines in Raj- 

 pootana, 2 where traces of nickel are known to exist, together with 

 cobalt, the latter being worked to a small extent to the present 

 day. That an extensive trade existed between China and India in 

 very remote periods is, as already mentioned, a well-established 

 fact, and my object in referring to the matter is to show the possi- 

 bility of the above-named materials having been obtained in 

 Indian mines, as that is an aspect of the question somewhat over- 

 looked hitherto. 



China. — In the early centuries of our era a western carrying 

 trade by the Chinese was continued from some unknown earlier 

 period. It extended as far westwards as the Persian Gulf, and to 

 this trade, in the first instance, may be attributed the introduction 

 of zinc and its combinations from China into Europe. Subse- 

 quently, though there is a record of Chinese vessels visiting Ormus 

 in the 15th century, it became contracted, "and the Chinese fleets 

 ceased to go beyond the ports of Ceylon and those of the coast of 



1 Its Sanscrit name was vag-ra, a title also applied to thunderbolts and diamonds, 

 in the same way that the term Adamas appears to have been used. It has been 

 recently shown by Colonel Yule (Glossary), that wootz is in reality not the name of steel 

 in any Indian language. He attributes its origin to a clerical error, or misreading, 

 for wook, representing the Canarese ulcku, steel. It first appears in a Paper, by 

 G. Pearson, M. D., in Phil. Trans, for 1795. 



x Economic Geology of India, 324-326. 



