A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v1.c10.t6: Light

A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v1.c10.t6

Language: English

Light

v1.c10.t6.1

“3. Light is coloured, and illumines other substances; and to the feel is hot: which is its distinguishing quality. It is defined as a substance hot to the feel. [Heat, then, and light are identified as one substance.]*

v1.c10.t6.2

"It has the qualities of earth except smell, taste, and gravity. It is eternal, as atoms ; not so, as aggregates.

v1.c10.t6.3

"Organic luminous bodies are beings abiding in the solar realm. The visual ray, which is the organ of sight, is lucid. Unorganic light is reckoned fourfold : earthy, celestial, alvine and mineral. Another distinction concerns sight and feel ; as light or heat may be either latent or manifest, in respect of both sight and feel; or differently in regard to either. Thus fire is both seen and felt ; the heat of hot water is felt but not seen ; moonshine is seen, but not felt ; the visual ray is neither seen nor felt. Terrestrious light is that, of which the fuel is earthy, as fire. Celestial is that of which the fuel is watery, as lightning and meteors of various sorts. Alvine is that of which the fuel is both earthy and watery : it is intestinal, which digests food and drink. Mineral is that which is found in pits as gold. For some maintain that gold is solid light ; or, at least that the chief ingredient is light which is rendered solid by mixture with some particles of earth. Were it mere earth, it might be calcined by fire strongly urged. Its light is not latent, but overpowered by the colour of the earthy particles mixed with it. In the Mīmāmsā, however, it is reckoned as a distinct substance, as before observed.¹

v1.c10.t6.4

∗ The sentence under bracket is Colebrooke's own.

v1.c10.t6.5

¹ The term "element" was not generally used in the modern sense of a component of a compound; rather it connoted certain properties characteristic of matter, e.g., coldness, dryness, heaviness, fluidity etc., thus it referred to certain qualities in the abstract. The Greek philosophers also held similar, if not identical, views. Cf. "Empedokles und die moderne Chemie." pp. 185-86 of "Griechische Denker" by Gomperz vol. 1, ed. 1903. The following extract will also throw much light on the subject: "The four so-called "elements"—air, water, earth and fire—were regarded by that intellectually great philosopher, Empedocles of Agrigent (about 440 B.C.), as the basis of the world; but neither he himself nor Aristotle, who adopted these into his system of natural philosophy, looked upon them as different properties carried about by one original matter. Their chief qualities (the primæ qualitates of the later scholastics) he held to be those apparent to the touch, viz., warm, cold, dry, and moist. Each of the four so-called elements is characterised by the possession of two of these properties, air being warm and moist,

v1.c10.t6.6

After giving an account of air and ether etc., Colebrooke proceeds with Kanāda's

Linked texts (1)

Vaiśeṣikasūtra — Kaṇāda, Sanskrit