Although rust has destroyed most re

Although rust has destroyed most relics of early iron metallurgy, one singular, enigmatic monument of this technological period does still exist. It offers puzzles to the historian of technology that, perhaps, will never be fully answered. This is the Iron Pillar of Delhi: 16 feet, 8 inches high and 16 inches in diameter. It is topped by an ornamental capital, which may once have borne a garuda or man-bird, the steed of the god Vishnu.
Ancient legend and modern ar­chaeology agree that the smelting of iron was discovered in mountainous northeastern Turkey, an area that the ancients called Pontus. The dis­coverers were said to be a people called Chalybes by the Greeks. The discovery took place around 2,000 B.C., when copper had already been smelted for two thousand years and had been alloyed with tin to make bronze for nearly as long.
The reason that it took so long to progress from copper to iron is that smelting iron calls for a much higher temperature than that needed for copper. Once the trick was learned, however, knowledge of iron spread swiftly, since iron ore was much more common than that of copper.
As knowledge of iron spread, peo­ples who received it improved the process. The first iron was wrought iron, with a low carbon content but with a spongy texture from inclusions of slag. It was little harder than cold-worked bronze.
In the latter part of the first mil­lennium B.C., smiths learned that hot iron could be made to absorb car­bon. Then it became much harder and springier while keeping its structural strength. Opinions differ as to where this discovery of steel first took place. Some say Austria, some Sparta, and some India. Perhaps it was discovered independently in more than one of these places.
About the same time, the Chinese learned how to raise the carbon con­tent still higher, to over 1.7 percent, and discovered cast iron. (The car­bon content of steel runs approximately from .25 percent to 1.7 per­cent, but in practice most early steel was carbonized on the surface only—"case hardened"—leaving the inte­rior still wrought iron.) Cast iron was even harder than steel. Although comparatively weak and brittle com­pared to steel, it had a low melting point, so that it could be formed into many useful shapes without the end­less reheating, hammering, and filing required for low-carbon irons. In the period that Westerners provincially call the Middle Ages, the Chinese made whole pagodas of cast iron. Two or three of these structures still stood at last accounts.
The Indians attained great skill in ironmongery. The caste system, which divided the people into a mul­titude of specialized, hereditary, en­dogamous occupational groups, forbidden to marry or even to have social relations outside their own castes, made Indian culture extraor­dinarily conservative and resistant to change. Like most human usages, this system had some advantages and some disadvantages. It purchased or­der and stability at the cost of progress and adaptability.
Indian workmanship shows the qualities to be expected when the workman is born into his trade with­out hope of leaving it: high technical skill and finish with an almost com­plete lack of progress from age to age. Indian methods of warfare, like other Indian methods, changed only with glacial slowness. Hence, despite the efforts of many valiant Indian warriors, Indian history is a long and woeful tale of conquest by aggressive outsiders: Persians, Greeks, Scyth­ians, Parthians, Huns, Turks, and Britons.
India, however, remained one of the few ancient lands that could make good iron and steel. Ingots of Indian steel were taken to Damas­cus, where Syrian smiths made them into the famous Damascene swords. In the early fifth century, one Indian ruler—probably the Gupta emperor Chandra Gupta II—erected the Iron Pillar, inscribed:

He, on whose arm fame was in­scribed by the sword, when, in battle in the Vanga countries [Ben­gal], he kneaded (and turned) back with (his) breast the enemies who, uniting together, came against (him); —he, by whom having crossed in warfare the seven mouths of the (river) Sindu [Indus], the Vahlikas were conquered; —he, by the breezes of whose prowess the great southern ocean is still perfumed;—he, the remnant of the great zeal of whose energy which utterly destroyed (his) enemies, like (the remnant of) the great glowing heat of a burnt-out fire in a great forest, even now leaves not the earth; though he, the king, as if wearied, has quitted this earth and gone to the other world moving in bodily form to the land (of paradise) won by (the memory of his) fame; by him, the king—who attained sole supreme sovereignty in the world, acquired by his own arm and (en­joyed) for a very long time; (and), having the name of Chandra, car­ried a beauty of countenance like (the beauty of) the full moon; hav­ing in faith fixed his mind upon (the God) Vishnu, this lofty standard of the divine Vishnu was set upon a hill ... (called) Vishnupad.1

Half a millennium later, the Pillar was moved to the village of Mehe­rauli nine miles south of Delhi. There are several contradictory sto­ries as to who moved it and whence.
In the 1190s, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, the first Turkish sultan of Delhi, tore down the Hindu temple of Vishnu at Meherault (to him merely a lair of vile idolaters to be destroyed for the glory of Allah) and built a Muslim mosque in its place. As part of this mosque, he began the world's largest minaret, the Qutub Minar, but died during its construction by falling off his polo pony. Polo was an old sport among the Central Asian nomads, which the British later picked up in India. As finished by other hands, the Qutub Minar, standing near the Iron Pillar, reached a height of 233 feet, 8 inches, not counting a gazebo installed on top but later removed. A spiral stone stairway leads up the in­side, and visitors may climb to the balcony on the first of the tower's five stages, 95 feet high.
I visited the Iron Pillar and the Qutub Minar with my guide in Delhi, Rajendra Singh. Mr. Singh, as is plain from his surname (meaning "lion"), was a Sikh. That is, he be­longed to a sect of monotheistic, militant, anticaste Hinduism founded in the fifteenth century by the Panjabi reformer Nanak. In the oriental adventure fiction of half a century ago, Sikhs were always tall and ferocious; but my Singh was a small, clerkly person despite his fierce whiskers and turban.
As it was Republic Day (January 25, 1967), Delhi was jammed with visitors, and it was hard to get close to any monument. Mr. Singh ex­plained that Indians were not allowed to go up the Qutub Minar alone, because young persons disap­pointed in love had taken to climb­ing to the top of the first stage and jumping off. They would make an exception for me because, first, "Eu­ropeans" were not sensitive enough to commit suicide and, second, who cared if they did?
In the tower, people were jammed five abreast on the left side of the broad stairway, leaving the other side clear for those who had already been up to come down. (The Indians seem to have been the first to adopt a rule of the road: in their case, keep­ing to the left, which the British took over from them.) Then a crowd of young Indian mods, with pointed shoes, tight pants, and long hair, rushed in behind me. They wouldn't wait in line for anybody. They crowded up the right side of the stair, encountering those bound downwards on that side. At once ev­erybody was packed in an immov­able jam, unable to advance or re­treat. It needed only for someone to lose his footing on the rounded sur­faces of the worn stone steps, and there would be a mass of a hundred people rolling down the steps with me on the bottom. I need not bela­bor the lethality of panic in a jam like that. Anyway, loudly ex­claiming: "Maim jata ham! Maim Ara ham! [I'm going]" and using knees and elbows, I forced my way down and out. That is why I have no pictures of Delhi from the Qutub Minar.

Kết quả (Việt) 1:

Mặc dù chất tẩy rửa đã phá hủy các di tích hầu hết đầu sắt luyện kim, một tượng đài số ít, bí ẩn của thời kỳ công nghệ này vẫn còn tồn tại. Nó cung cấp câu đố để các nhà sử học của công nghệ mà, có lẽ, sẽ không bao giờ được hoàn toàn được trả lời. Đây là trụ cột Delhi, sắt: 16 bàn chân, 8 inch cao và đường kính 16 inch. Nó được đứng đầu bởi một thủ đô hoàn thiện một lần có thể có chịu một garuda hay người đàn ông-chim, steed của thần Vishnu.Truyền thuyết cổ xưa và hiện đại khảo cổ học đồng ý rằng nấu chảy sắt được phát hiện ở miền núi đông bắc Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ, một khu vực mà người cổ đại gọi là Pontus. Những người phát hiện được gọi là một người được gọi là Chalybes bởi người Hy Lạp. Việc phát hiện ra diễn ra khoảng 2.000 TCN, khi đồng đã được smelted cho hai nghìn năm qua và đã được hợp kim với thiếc để làm cho đồng gần càng lâu.Lý do mà phải mất quá lâu để tiến bộ từ đồng để sắt là rằng nấu chảy sắt gọi cho một nhiệt độ cao hơn nhiều so với những gì cần thiết cho đồng. Một khi các trick học được, Tuy nhiên, kiến thức của sắt lây lan nhanh chóng, kể từ khi quặng sắt là phổ biến hơn nhiều so với đồng.Là kiến thức của sắt lây lan, người đã nhận được nó cải thiện quá trình. Sắt đầu tiên là wrought sắt, với một nội dung carbon thấp nhưng với kết cấu xốp từ vùi xỉ. Đó là ít khó khăn hơn so với làm việc lạnh đồng.In the latter part of the first mil­lennium B.C., smiths learned that hot iron could be made to absorb car­bon. Then it became much harder and springier while keeping its structural strength. Opinions differ as to where this discovery of steel first took place. Some say Austria, some Sparta, and some India. Perhaps it was discovered independently in more than one of these places.About the same time, the Chinese learned how to raise the carbon con­tent still higher, to over 1.7 percent, and discovered cast iron. (The car­bon content of steel runs approximately from .25 percent to 1.7 per­cent, but in practice most early steel was carbonized on the surface only—"case hardened"—leaving the inte­rior still wrought iron.) Cast iron was even harder than steel. Although comparatively weak and brittle com­pared to steel, it had a low melting point, so that it could be formed into many useful shapes without the end­less reheating, hammering, and filing required for low-carbon irons. In the period that Westerners provincially call the Middle Ages, the Chinese made whole pagodas of cast iron. Two or three of these structures still stood at last accounts.The Indians attained great skill in ironmongery. The caste system, which divided the people into a mul­titude of specialized, hereditary, en­dogamous occupational groups, forbidden to marry or even to have social relations outside their own castes, made Indian culture extraor­dinarily conservative and resistant to change. Like most human usages, this system had some advantages and some disadvantages. It purchased or­der and stability at the cost of progress and adaptability.Indian workmanship shows the qualities to be expected when the workman is born into his trade with­out hope of leaving it: high technical skill and finish with an almost com­plete lack of progress from age to age. Indian methods of warfare, like other Indian methods, changed only with glacial slowness. Hence, despite the efforts of many valiant Indian warriors, Indian history is a long and woeful tale of conquest by aggressive outsiders: Persians, Greeks, Scyth­ians, Parthians, Huns, Turks, and Britons.
India, however, remained one of the few ancient lands that could make good iron and steel. Ingots of Indian steel were taken to Damas­cus, where Syrian smiths made them into the famous Damascene swords. In the early fifth century, one Indian ruler—probably the Gupta emperor Chandra Gupta II—erected the Iron Pillar, inscribed:

He, on whose arm fame was in­scribed by the sword, when, in battle in the Vanga countries [Ben­gal], he kneaded (and turned) back with (his) breast the enemies who, uniting together, came against (him); —he, by whom having crossed in warfare the seven mouths of the (river) Sindu [Indus], the Vahlikas were conquered; —he, by the breezes of whose prowess the great southern ocean is still perfumed;—he, the remnant of the great zeal of whose energy which utterly destroyed (his) enemies, like (the remnant of) the great glowing heat of a burnt-out fire in a great forest, even now leaves not the earth; though he, the king, as if wearied, has quitted this earth and gone to the other world moving in bodily form to the land (of paradise) won by (the memory of his) fame; by him, the king—who attained sole supreme sovereignty in the world, acquired by his own arm and (en­joyed) for a very long time; (and), having the name of Chandra, car­ried a beauty of countenance like (the beauty of) the full moon; hav­ing in faith fixed his mind upon (the God) Vishnu, this lofty standard of the divine Vishnu was set upon a hill ... (called) Vishnupad.1

Half a millennium later, the Pillar was moved to the village of Mehe­rauli nine miles south of Delhi. There are several contradictory sto­ries as to who moved it and whence.
In the 1190s, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, the first Turkish sultan of Delhi, tore down the Hindu temple of Vishnu at Meherault (to him merely a lair of vile idolaters to be destroyed for the glory of Allah) and built a Muslim mosque in its place. As part of this mosque, he began the world's largest minaret, the Qutub Minar, but died during its construction by falling off his polo pony. Polo was an old sport among the Central Asian nomads, which the British later picked up in India. As finished by other hands, the Qutub Minar, standing near the Iron Pillar, reached a height of 233 feet, 8 inches, not counting a gazebo installed on top but later removed. A spiral stone stairway leads up the in­side, and visitors may climb to the balcony on the first of the tower's five stages, 95 feet high.
I visited the Iron Pillar and the Qutub Minar with my guide in Delhi, Rajendra Singh. Mr. Singh, as is plain from his surname (meaning "lion"), was a Sikh. That is, he be­longed to a sect of monotheistic, militant, anticaste Hinduism founded in the fifteenth century by the Panjabi reformer Nanak. In the oriental adventure fiction of half a century ago, Sikhs were always tall and ferocious; but my Singh was a small, clerkly person despite his fierce whiskers and turban.
As it was Republic Day (January 25, 1967), Delhi was jammed with visitors, and it was hard to get close to any monument. Mr. Singh ex­plained that Indians were not allowed to go up the Qutub Minar alone, because young persons disap­pointed in love had taken to climb­ing to the top of the first stage and jumping off. They would make an exception for me because, first, "Eu­ropeans" were not sensitive enough to commit suicide and, second, who cared if they did?
In the tower, people were jammed five abreast on the left side of the broad stairway, leaving the other side clear for those who had already been up to come down. (The Indians seem to have been the first to adopt a rule of the road: in their case, keep­ing to the left, which the British took over from them.) Then a crowd of young Indian mods, with pointed shoes, tight pants, and long hair, rushed in behind me. They wouldn't wait in line for anybody. They crowded up the right side of the stair, encountering those bound downwards on that side. At once ev­erybody was packed in an immov­able jam, unable to advance or re­treat. It needed only for someone to lose his footing on the rounded sur­faces of the worn stone steps, and there would be a mass of a hundred people rolling down the steps with me on the bottom. I need not bela­bor the lethality of panic in a jam like that. Anyway, loudly ex­claiming: "Maim jata ham! Maim Ara ham! [I'm going]" and using knees and elbows, I forced my way down and out. That is why I have no pictures of Delhi from the Qutub Minar.