Wootz Steel

[James L. Fitzgerald]

> It is claimed that wootz was being made in india as early as 400 but does
> archeology support this. the earliest evidence (on the net!) is from
> medieval south india. Any info would be appreciated.
>
> RB

I have argued (in a paper entitled "pIta and zaikya/saikya:  Two terms of
Iron and Steel Technology in the MBh" [Journal of the American Oriental
Society, 120.1 (Jan-Mar, 2000), pp.  44-61]) that the MBh knew of steel
produced by a fusion process.  I reviewed a variety of evidence suggesting
that that this may be the famous Indian steel known in ancient Western
historical literatures, the steel that the Romans seem to have imported in
large quantities, the steel that was exported from India to make the best
Damascene steel, and, finally, the wootz that Europeans became aware of in
the eighteenth century in South India (and which then played an important
role in European advances in steel technology in the first half of the
nineteenth century).

The evidence of the MBh is the doublet saikya/zaikya used several times to
describe iron weapons in the text (though a crucial pair of passages in the
Sabha Parvan refer to molten gold).  I concluded after a close review of all
the textual passages and all available commentaries, that this doublet is a
nominal formation based on the root sic, siJcati, which, Rau pointed out, is
used to describe molten metal in late Vedic literature.  The commentatorial
tradition was not consistent in its treatment of these terms, and usually
relied upon the etymology zaikya < zikya (a carrying sling, kavadi), which
explanation, I believe I have shown in the paper, does not adequately
explain either zaikya or the obvious doublet saikya.

Unsolved problems that stand out after my argument is made:  1) How did
there occur the unusual development from saikya to zaikya?  and 2) Why, as
seems broadly to be the case, was knowledge of this saikya/zaikya steel
forgotten in Sanskrit textual traditions (some traces of recollection do
persist in some inscriptional evidence; see the paper).  I cannot answer
either of these questions, but I believe that readers of the paper will find
the evidence of the MBh text convincing that saikya and zaikya are indeed
two forms of the same word and must indeed refer to metal, usually ferrous
[and hence "steel"], produced by fusion.

Jim Fitzgerald

University of Tennessee