Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/76

 same word found its way into Spanish, in the shapes of A l hi n fie and Alfijide, first with the meaning of steel, and then of a steel mirror, and finally of the metal foil of a glass mirror. The Onda- nique of Kirman, which Marco Polo mentions, was so called from its comparative excellence, and the swords of Kirman were eagerly sought after, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by the Turks, who gave great prices for them. We have seen that Arrian mentions Indian steel, 0-1877/309 ’IvSiko's, as imported into the Abyssinian ports ; and Salmasius mentions that among the sur- viving Greek treatises was one ircpi /?a ’DS ikoD criSrjpov, “ on the tempering of Indian steel.”

Twenty miles east of Nirmal, and a few miles south of the Shisha hills, occurs the hornblende slate or schist from which the magnetic iron used for ages in the manufacture of Damascus steel, and by the Persians for their sword blades, is still obtained. The Dimdurti mines on the Godavari were also another source of Damascus steel, the mines here being mere holes dug through the thin granitic soil, from which the ore is detached by means of small iron crowbars. The iron ore is still further separated from its granitic or quartzy matrix by washing ; and the sand thus ob- tained is still manufactured into Damascus steel at Kona Samun- dram, near Dimdurti. The sand is melted with charcoal, without any flux, and is obtained at once in a perfectly tough and malleable state, superior to any English iron, or even the best Swedish. The Persian [Armenian] merchants, who in Voysey’s days still frequented the iron furnaces of Kona Samundram, informed him that they had in vain attempted to imitate, in Persia, the steel formed from it. In the manufacture of the best steel three- fourths of Samundram ore is used, and one-fourth of Indore, which is a peroxide of iron.

In the Panjab, superbly ornamented arms, of the costliest de- scription, are made at Lahore, Sialkote, Gujrat, Shahpur, and in Cashmere. Good arms are also made at Monghyr, in the Bhagalpur division of Bengal. In Chittagong the dao or bill,