Allusions to the famous sword-blades of India would seem to be frequent in Arabic literature.  Several will be found in Hamasa’s collection of ancient Arabic poems translated by Freytag.  The old commentator on one of these passages says:  “Ut optimos gladios significet ...  Indicos esse dixit,” and here the word used in the original is Hundwaniyah.  In Manger’s version of Arabshah’s Life of Timur are several allusions of the same kind; one, a quotation from Antar, recalls the ferrum candidum of Curtius: 

  “Albi (gladii) Indici meo in sanguine abluuntur.”

In the histories, even of the Mahomedan conquest of India, the Hindu infidels are sent to Jihannam with “the well-watered blade of the Hindi sword”; or the sword is personified as “a Hindu of good family.”  Coming down to later days, Chardin says of the steel of Persia:  “They combine it with Indian steel, which is more tractable ... and is much more esteemed.”  Dupre, at the beginning of this century, tells us:  “I used to believe ... that the steel for the famous Persian sabres came from certain mines in Khorasan.  But according to all the information I have obtained, I can assert that no mine of steel exists in that province.  What is used for these blades comes in the shape of disks from Lahore.”  Pottinger names steel among the imports into Kerman from India.  Elphinstone the Accurate, in his Caubul, confirms Dupre:  “Indian Steel [in Afghanistan] is most prized for the material; but the best swords are made in Persia and in Syria;” and in his History of India, he repeats:  “The steel of India was in request with the ancients; it is celebrated in the oldest Persian poem, and is still the material of the scimitars of Khorasan and Damascus."[4]

Klaproth, in his Asia Polyglotta, gives Andun as the Ossetish and Andan as the Wotiak, for Steel.  Possibly these are essentially the same with Hundwaniy and Alhinde, pointing to India as the original source of supply. [In the Sikandar Nama, e Bara (or “Book of Alexander the Great,” written A.D. 1200, by Abu Muhammad bin Yusuf bin Mu, Ayyid-i-Nizamu-’d-Din), translated by Captain H. Wilberforce Clarke (Lond., 1881, large 8vo), steel is frequently mentioned:  Canto xix. 257, p. 202; xx. 12, p. 211; xlv. 38, p. 567; lviii. 32, pp. 695, 42, pp. 697, 62, 66, pp. 699; lix. 28, p. 703.—­H.  C.]

Avicenna, in his fifth book De Anima, according to Roger Bacon, distinguishes three very different species of iron:  “1st.  Iron which is good for striking or bearing heavy strokes, and for being forged by hammer and fire, but not for cutting-tools.  Of this hammers and anvils are made, and this is what we commonly call Iron simply. 2nd.  That which is purer, has more heat in it, and is better adapted to take an edge and to form cutting-tools, but is not so malleable, viz. Steel.