National Youth Conference on Indian Knowledge Systems 2023
August 25-27 2023
IIT ROORKEE
NYCIKS-2023:Overview of the book “Archaeometallurgy of India from Rigveda to VālmīkiRāmāyaṇa”–Shri Satya Narain
Shri Satya Narain received Bachelor of Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Roorkee in 1967. He specialized in Corrosion Engineering and worked in Petroleum and Chemical Industries.
Besides his professional specialization, he is greatly interested in India's ancient history and knowledge systems. And no wonder they were quite excited to find that one of the oldest and grandest epic, The Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, also provide a vivid and scientific description of metals of antiquity. In light of this fact, it is surprising that the evidence of scientific metallurgical knowledge of this gem of the epic has not yet found its due place in India's or World's scientific literature. Hence, he along with Shri Navin Chandra decided to study the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, as well as the vast Vedic Literature, to know how the ancient knowledge systems of metallurgy evolved and if sufficient information would be available to reconstruct the history of metals in Ancient India. This work has taken about five years to complete and contains not only a description of the ancient metallurgy of India but also gives us a glimpse of our rich culture.
