Rasadhyaya 161_169

161_169

Here, a pit built of clods like a well, of the size of a cubit's forearm, smeared with a wash of plaster or smeared with lime accompanied by molasses, when dried, / is called this apparatus named bhūdhara. / Then, in an earthen or bell-metal saucer smeared with glass, having cast mercury that has digested gold amalgam as well as a powder of purified sulphur in a sixteenth part, having placed over the opening an earthen cup smeared with glass, and having smeared it with rag and clay, one should place that saucer-capsule inside the earth-apparatus and kindle a fierce fire. / And the nature of purified sulphur is to be learned from the mouth of a guru. / Because in this whole treatise, as elsewhere too, purified sulphur alone is the two-fold root seed [...]. / For this very reason, it should be known that this method of purifying sulphur is concealed everywhere. / And if calcined-and-digested with defective sulphur, the task is not accomplished; thus the purification of sulphur must be understood from the mouth of a guru. / Likewise, when the sixteenth part of sulphur previously cast in is digested, one should again add a sixteenth part of sulphur [...], place the earthen cup, and kindle a fierce fire. / And thus, when purified sulphur six times [the weight of] the mercury is digested, the mercury becomes exceedingly red. / And having smeared silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, brass, and bell-metal—these seven metals—with that mercury and melted them, they become fifteen[-carat] gold. / Thus ends the fifth [process], the calcination-digestion of sulphur for mercury that has digested gold amalgam.