A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v1.c9.s3.2

v1.c9.s3.2

During the Tantric period, with its system of the "Philosophy of Mercury" a vast mass of chemical information was accumulated, which was pressed into signal service in the period immidiately succeeding it—the Iatro-chemical Period of India. The prominent feature of the former lies in the search after the *elixir vitae* and the powder of projection as the contents of the Rasaratnākara and Rasārnava amply testify; whereas in the latter these phantastic and extravagant ideas, impossible of realisation, had subsided into something more practical and tangible. The numerous preparations of mercury, iron, copper and other metals, although they could not secure immortality or revive the dead, were found to be helpful accessories in medicine. At first they came to be used cautiously and tentatively, mixed up with the recipes of the Charaka and the Susruta, which are drawn chiefly from the vegetable kingdom; but they soon began to assert a supremacy of their own and even to supplant the old Ayurvedic treatment by herbs and simples. Nay more, absurd pretensions were set up on behalf of these metallic preparations. Thus in Rasendrachintámani, a work probably co-eval with R. R. S., we come across this remarkable passage:— "Revered teacher! be pleased to instruct me, for the benefit of the weak and the timid, in a mode of treatment which will dispense with the use of the lancet, and both active and potential cauteries," thus putting in a plea for the indiscriminate use of mercurial remedies.