BY THE ANCIENT HINDUS. 



211 



ing gunpowder are found in India and written in Sanskrit, 

 and that the use of gunpowder and its application to the dis- 

 charge of missiles from projectile weapons was a well known 

 fact in ancient India, corroborating so far the opinion of those 

 who always pointed out India as the original seat of its inven- 

 tion. The question whether China received the knowledge of 

 gunpowder from India, or vice versa, cannot be touched here, 

 as there do not exist any trustworthy documents bearing on 

 this question. No Chinese work on this question can, with 

 respect to antiquity, be compared with the Sukraniti, so that 

 even if the Chinese should have independently invented gun- 

 powder, the claim as to priority of invention will certainly 

 remain with India. 



A Franciscan monk, Berthold Schwarz, whose real name 

 was Constantin Ancklitzen or Anklitz, is generally, espe- 

 cially in Germany, credited with the invention of gunpowder, 

 which, according to tradition, was made at Freiburg in the 

 Breisgau about the year 1330. No doubt Black Barthel, 

 der schwarze Barthel, as he was popularly called, dabbled 

 in alchemy and was very fond of chemical experiments, 

 during one of which he was blown up and nearly killed by 

 an explosion of a mortar he was experimenting upon. 

 Eventually he was accused of practising magic and necro- 

 mancy and sent to prison. A grateful posterity erected 

 in his honour a statue on the spot where the Franciscan 

 Convent of Freiburg had once stood ; an honour which he may 

 have richly deserved for many reasons, but surely not for 

 being the original inventor of gunpowder. 



Many years previously to Berthold Schwarz, another 

 Franciscan monk, Roger Bacon (1214-94), the Doctor Mira- 

 bilis of Oxford, had already pointed out the peculiar qualities 

 of saltpetre, as exemplified in the action of gunpowder. 

 Like every chemical scholar in those times he became 

 an object of clerical suspicion, was incarcerated by his 

 superiors on the plea of practising forbidden magic and 



