Ans.
We have been told through Indian as well as foreign literary
sources that in ancient times, commodities like sugar,
palm oil, coconut oil, cotton cloth, clarified butter,
cast iron, tin sheets, copper vessels, dyes and pigments
like cinnabar (ochre), indigo and lac, perfumes like sandalwood
oil, musk tamarind, costus, macir, camphor, and even crude
glass crockery were being exported from India.(The Periplus
of the Erythrean Sea - Travelsand Trade in the Indian
Ocean by a Merchant in the First Century, Translated from
the Greek and Annoted by Wilfred H. Schoff, Longmans Green
and Co. New York, 1912)
These
items are not gifts of nature, their manufacture involves
processing to effect chemical changes in their properties
notably in the case of sugar, glass, metals and perfumes.
Thus some kind of chemical engineering must have existed
in India in those times i.e. about 2000 to 2500 years
ago. Alongwith this chemical processing, some physical
apparatus would have been used. This presumes the existence
of at least a rudimentary knowledge that in today's terminology
would be called 'mechanical engineering'.No doubt, the
chemical and mechanical engineering would have been very
rudimentary by today's standards but nevertheless it would
have been chemical and mechanical engineering of some
standard as is evident
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from
the following references about the quality of Indian products
in foreign literature of those times. When referring to
India, the author of the Greek text Periplus, which is
dated around the 1st century A.D. has said, "There is
a river near it called the Ganges" .... "On its bank is
a market town which has the same name as the river, Ganges.
Through
this place are brought malabathrum and Gangetic spikenard
and pearls and muslins of the finest sorts, which are
called Gangetic. It is said that there are gold mines
near these places, and there is a gold coin which is called
caltis. And just opposite this river there is an island
in the ocean, the last part of the inhabited world towards
the east, under the rising sun itself, it is called Chryse;
and it has the best tortoise-shell of all the places on
the Erythrean Sea"2.
The
Periplus further states that "Nelcynda is distant from
Muziris by river and sea about five hundred stadia, and
is of another kingdom, the Pandian. This place also is
situated on a river, about one hundred and twenty stadia
from the sea." ... "They send large ships to these market
towns on account of the great quantity and bulk of pepper
and malabathrum.There are imported here, in the first
place, a great quantity of coin; topaz, thin clothing,
"fine linen, antimony, coral, crude glass, copper,tin,
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lead; wine, not much, but as much as at Barygaza; realgar
and orpiment; and wheat enough for sailors," "There is
exported pepper which is produced in quantity only in
one region near these markets, a district called Cottonara.
Besides this there are exported great quantities of fine
pearls, ivory, silk cloth, spikenard from the Ganges,
malabathrum from the places in the interior,transparent
stones of all kinds, diamonds and sapphires"3.
About other commodities the Periplus says, "The voyage
to all these far-side market towns is made from Egypt
about the month of July, that is Epiphi. And ships are
also customarily fitted out from the places across the
sea, from Ariaca and Barygaza, bringing to these far-side
market-towns the products" "wheat, rice, clarified butter,
sesame oil, cotton cloth (the monache and the sagmatogene),
and gridles, and honey from the reed called Sacchari."
4
Thus we see that in a rambling manner, the Periplus refers
to the "muslins of the finest sorts," "fine pearls, ivory,
silk cloth" "crude glass", "coins", etc'., apart from
many other commodities that were exported from India.
Other western historians, and traveller-adventurers like
Megasthanes, Strabo, Ptolemy, Fa Hien, Huen Tsang, Pliny,
Marco Polo, Al Beruni, Ibn Batuta, etc., have also enumerated
the various commodities that were produced and exported
by India.
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