How many centuries did coal lie within reach of man’s hand, in England and elsewhere, before it was discovered and made use of? The attractive property of the magnet was known to Plato in the fifth century B.C., and Lucretius in the first century B.C. devotes a long passage of his poem to it (vi. 909-1089); yet its property of pointing north and south when free to move horizontally is first distinctly mentioned (in Europe) in the twelfth century A.D.[251] Early Indian gunpowder is a fiction. The first gunpowder and firearms used in India were neither invented nor manufactured by the Hindus: they were imported during the Middle Ages from the West. The guns of Upper India entered through Afghanistan; those of Western India were brought by ships. Let us consider the latter first. “If any reliance is to be placed on Moulla Daud Bidury, the author of _Tohfutu-s Salutin_,” says General Briggs, “guns were used (in 1368) by the Hindus (of Bijanagar), and in a subsequent passage (Ferishta remarks) that the Muhammadans used them for the first time during the next campaign. But I am disposed to doubt the validity of both these statements.... Ferishta ... also observes that Turks and Europeans skilled in gunnery worked the artillery. That guns were in common use before the arrival of the Portuguese in India in 1498, seems certain from the mention of Faria y Sousa.”[252] The first observation suggested by this passage is, that Ferishta does not say the Hindus had _guns_ on this occasion; he says they had عرابه (_’arábah_),[253] a word which originally meant a _cart_. In the early days of field artillery the guns were carried in carts,[254] from which they were taken and laid on trestles when required for use. Wheeled gun-carriages only came into general use in Europe during the reign of Louis XI. of France (1461-83).[255] Things followed the same course in India, and the word ’arába thus came in time to have two meanings; most arába being simply carts, some being (so to speak) gun-carriages. Then later writers arose who insisted that all ’arába were gun-carriages at the early date of 1368, because _some_ ’arába were gun-carriages in and after 1526. Ferishta (who died about 1611) fell into the trap, and after him fell several modern historians. Secondly, General Briggs’ conclusion about guns in India before 1498 seems somewhat unguarded. It is beyond dispute that firearms were used on the west coast of India during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, but the evidence we possess points to the conclusion that they belonged almost exclusively to Arab and Portuguese ships. The fact that Captain Cook cruised on the coast of Otaheite in 1769 in a ship equipped with firearms, does not warrant the conclusion that the natives possessed firearms. Ferishta was writing about events which took place two hundred years before he was born, and there is a particular reason for doubting the existence of firearms in Bijanagar at this early period.