712 
Indian Steel. 
[December, 
understood, or possibly from Gallia, — Wales itself, — or the 
Pyrennees ; but Gunnar, the Gothic chief, boasted (perhaps , 
untruly) of owning swords better than all the Hunnish ones 
(Atlakvidha). 
From these and other collected allusions it appears that 
during the first five centuries after Christ, or rather after . 
the migration of Odin to Denmark (70 B.C.), the best 
swords of North European make were Finnish, or made by 
subject races, the Finns, for their masters the Danes. . 
During the latter five centuries, after the invasion of Attila 
(4 33 to 453 A.D.), the best blades were first Hunnish, of 
perhaps semi-Oriental origin ; and at a later period, when 
Oriental commerce passed through Constantinople and 
across Europe to Denmark, the sword-blades were truly 
Oriental, while the ornamentation and hilts were of semi- 
Roman type, as proved by unearthed specimens from tombs. 
In the Early crusading period Damascus blades were 
superior to anything before made. 
There is hence proved a successive tendency over centuries 
to obtain better sword-blades invariably from the East, and 
culminating in the Damascus blades, so called, of the time 
of Saltan Salakuddin. 
Since that time the tendency has been steadily downward, 
arriving at last at the London outfitters’ regulation sword, 
made for trade profit and unfit for use in action. 
But reverting to Damascus blades : these nominally came 
from Persia, but actually from India. We learn from the 
“ Ain-i-Akbar ” that Persian traders from Isfahan were, in 
the time of Abbas, in the habit of going to the Indore, and 
to the Nirmal Steel-mines in the then province or Subah of 
Barar, superintending the steel-making operations, weighing 
the proportions, testing the toughness, and taking the wutz 
steel to Persia, where the ores could not produce the same 
qualities. It is probable, therefore, that there were also 
other unmentioned places in India supplying Commerce 
with steel, not only then, but for many centuries before; or, 
in other words, India had always supplied Europe with the 
best steel, at least since A.D. 400, when the Dehli Lath in- 
dicated a high pitch of excellence in metal working, and 
probably since the Odinic migration (B.C. 70), or before it. 
The term Wutz being now, and perhaps always, dis- 
tinctive of a special best steel, for which the generic term is 
aspat, or ispat, it is necessary to notice that the word itself 
is Telegu, indicating the ancient Telingana, Eastern Hai- 
darabad, or Subah Waradh or Barar (all of which are 
identical territories) as the chief seat of manufacture, of 
