Anandakanda 2.3

Ānandakanda 2.3 / The venerable Bhairava: / <Silver: synonyms> / Raupya, śubhra, vasuśreṣṭha, rucira, candralohaka, / rajata, taptarūpya, candrabhūti, raupyaka,

kaladhauta, saudha, candrahāsa, and tāraka. / <Varieties of silver> / It is considered to be of three types: natural, born from mines, and artificial.

Among these, each former silver is superior in its qualities to each latter. / Silver originating from mountains such as Mount Kailāsa is natural;

when touched, it destroys great diseases of embodied beings. / That silver which originates on the peaks of the Himālaya and other mountains

is declared by connoisseurs to be mine-born, a supreme rejuvenation therapy. / Tin that has turned to silver through being placed on the sandals of Śrī Rāma

is called pādarūpya; it is artificial and dispels all diseases. / <Characteristics of acceptable and rejectable silver> / Dense, unctuous, heavy, smooth, white when burnt and cut, soft,

rich in color, clear like the moon, of uniform lustre when burnt and cut, / resembling a conch, smooth, free from blisters—such silver is auspicious.

Red, yellow, or black when burnt, rough, cracked, light, / thick, and coarse—silver of these eight kinds is to be rejected.

Hard, artificial, dry, discolored, full of dross, laminar, / [and] lost in burning, cutting, or hammering—such silver is considered mediocre.

Silver that is neither purified nor killed causes burning sensation, diarrhea, / and loss of semen, strength, and lifespan; therefore, one should purify and kill it.

<Purification of silver> / Melted with lead and borax, it attains purification. / Silver dropped three times into oil of jyotiṣmatī,

silver foil repeatedly heated and quenched, attains purification. / Or dropped into [oil] originating from piśāca, it attains purification.

One should take the silver freed of defects, extracted from lead, / [and] pour it seven times into water derived from śvetakumbha.

<Silver ash (1, 2, 3)> / One should thoroughly grind [it] with the juice produced from kuraṇḍa and agasti flowers; / smeared silver leaves one should calcine with wild cow-dung cakes.

It is killed, there is no doubt here; or smeared with ash of mercury, / smeared with the sour group, by application of calcinations as before,

it is killed. One should grind yellow orpiment, quicksilver, and tin with sour liquid; / smearing silver leaves and calcining, one should reduce it to ash.

It is killed by combinations of sulfur and the like; it is destroyed by copper pyrite. / <Silver ash (4)> / One should cook pyrite with spurge milk and smear the silver leaves;

sealing and cooking in an elephant-calcination pit, one should cook again with the aforementioned. / Calcinating thus for forty calcinations, the silver becomes killed.

<Silver ash (5)> / Equal parts of bhūdhātrī and pyrite, pippalī, rock salt, and sour liquids— / smearing silver leaves, sealing, one should cook in seven calcinations.

Ground repeatedly with the juices, it is killed, there is no doubt here. / <Silver ash (6)> / With citrus juice and quicksilver, one should prepare an amalgam of silver.

Confining it after placing sulfur beneath, and sealing it within a crucible, / one should foment it in a sand apparatus for one day with a strong fire.

When self-cooled, that paste, ground with orpiment and sour gruel, / one should incinerate twelve times; the silver becomes ash.

<Calx of silver (7)>
Ground with pyrite powder and citron juice, and incinerated slowly, / by thirty repetitions that silver becomes an unrevivable calx.

A reddish luster will belong to all metals upon an excess of incineration, without doubt.
<Calx of silver (8)>
Four parts of silver leaf, and one part of purified orpiment;

it is to be ground with lemon juice, and one should coat the silver leaves. / One should dry it, seal it, and incinerate it with thirty wild cow-dung cakes.

By fourteen such incinerations, it is surely killed into an unrevivable state.
<Calx of silver (9)>
Four parts of silver leaf, and one part of killed tin,

or one part of sulfur, should be smeared [over them] ground with lemon [juice]. / Having sealed it, it must be cooked with three incinerations using twenty-five wild cow-dung cakes.

It is killed, there is no doubt of this; sulfur should be added again and again.
<Calx of silver (10)>
Having taken equal parts of mercury and sulfur, [with] root of kākatuṇḍa,

one should grind it with buffalo milk; one should wash that paste with water. / Having cast it into a ball of turmeric, and casting that ball into horse dung,

and having kept it [there] for twenty-one days, one should take it out again from its interior. / Having ground that, silver leaves are to be smeared [with it] along with some sour liquid.

Through twenty incinerations it becomes ash, there is no doubt of this. / With the ash ground with sour liquid, one should smear a copper razor:

one should know that it is killed when it becomes calx of gold and silver.
<Properties of silver>
Silver is unctuous, astringent, and sour, sweet in post-digestive effect,

an establisher of youth, cooling, scraping, conqueror of vāta and pitta, / an aphrodisiac, appetite-producing, strengthening, and a stimulator of the digestive fire.