A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c35.11

v2.c35.11

Mathuránátha, again, states that the determination of the degree of purity (the carat) of gold by rubbing against the assaying stone and observing the character of the yellowish streak against the black smooth background, is only an indirect means of ascertaining weight (गुरुत्वलक्षण lit. specific gravity)—which seems to suggest that there was a more direct means of arriving at the latter. Probably this refers to the common Indian method of comparing the lengths of wires of uniform thickness that can be formed by drawing different pieces of gold of equal weight through the same diamond bore. I think it may be regarded as fairly certain that the Hindus were ignorant of Archimedes's discovery, an ignorance which, at any rate, they could not have well borrowed from the Greeks, no more than they could have thus borrowed their knowledge of things unknown to the Greeks themselves. [Cf. Udayana, Kiranávali:—