History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India, Incorporating the History of Hindu Chemistry by Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray c26.3

c26.3

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 immediately succeeding it—the Iatrochemical Period of India The prominent feature of the former lay in the search after the *elixir vitae* and the powder of projection, as the contents of the Rasaratnakara and the Rasarnava amply testify ; whereas in the latter these fantastic and extravagant ideas, impossible of realization, 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 were 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, even absurd pretensions were set up on behalf of these metallic preparations. Thus in Rasendrachintamani, a work probably coeval with Rasaratnasamuchchaya, we come across this remarkable passage : "Revered teacher ! be pleased to instruct me, for the benefit of the weak and timid, in a mode of treatment which will dispense with the use of the lancet, and both active and potential cauteries." This is putting in a plea for the indiscriminate use of mercurial remedies.