Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v2.c44.s3.5

v2.c44.s3.5

We would now comment on the date of Nāgārjuna and his precise identity. Al-Beruni mentioned the popularity of the Indian Science Rasāyana, and that the Indians were ‘inclined towards the mineralogical method of alchemy’. In that connection, he wrote that ‘a famous representative of this art was Nāgārjuna, a native of the fort Daihak near Somnāth. . . . His book is very rare . . . He lived nearly a hundred years before our time’. (Sachau, 1910, 1983: 189) Quoting Al-Beruni, many authors have put Nāgārjuna in the ninth/eighth century AD. (Ray, 1956:116-18) However as Filliozat (1951) has pointed out, Hiuen-Tsang attested in AD 630 that the alchemist Nāgārjuna had lived much before his time: ‘Nāgārjuna in Sangharama not far to the south of the city Kosala or Berar; he was well-practised in the art of compounding medicines which provided long life; Sadvaha-rāja had partaken of this mysterious medicine’. (Beal, 1884, 1969: 212)