EXCERPT FROM ARCHEOLOGY AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE.

Mr Berthelot.

V. - On Indian alchemy.


Materials for a Neglected Chapter in the History of Chemistry or Contributions to Indian Alchemy (Manuscript Memoir of 43 pages), by PRAPULTA CHANDRA RÂY, Professor at Presidency College, Calcutta.
Albirouni's India, 2 volumes translated from Arabic into English, by Dr. SACHAU, London, 1888; t. 1, p. 187.
BURNOUF, Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism: on the Tantras, t. 1, p. 522-554.
Zeitung deutsch. Morg. Ges., t XXIII, p. 261; t. XXX,p. 189, p. 617; t. XXXI, p. 647; t. XL, etc : On Hippocrates and Indian medicine.
Asian Journal, 1858: Research on the natural history and physics of Albirouni.

In the course of my studies on the history of Chemistry I have been led to look for traces of the introduction of alchemical ideas among various peoples, from Egypt and the Egyptian-Greeks, who seem to have been their promoters in the world. I have established this filiation by name for the West, in the Middle Ages, as deriving from a double source, namely: the direct industrial tradition of the arts relating to goldsmithing, to the working of metals, glass, ceramic products and coloring matters, on the one hand; and on the other, the indirect return, by the Arabs of Spain, of oriental traditions. The latter, moreover, also came from an Egyptian-Greek origin, the Greek writings of the Egyptian alchemists having been translated first into the Syriac language and transmitted to the Arabs of Asia,in communication with those of Spain. I published the Greek, Syriac, Arabic texts and I commented on the Latin texts, which establish this whole story.

However, alchemy, that is to say chemistry in its original form, half-scientific and half-chimerical, has spread throughout the civilized world, and especially throughout Asia. Thus there were Persian texts, from the Sassanid period, and perhaps even older, which exercised some influence on the development of Arabic science, alongside the Syro-Greek texts. I have related what traces remain of these texts and what attempts, so far fruitless, I have made to find them, addressing myself especially to the Parsis of Bombay.

These attempts put me, among others, in contact with a learned Indian professor of Presidency College, in Calcutta, Mr. Rây, who sent me a manuscript memoir on the origins of Indian alchemy. It is this thesis that I propose to examine, summarizing the main results, but without sharing all the opinions. This historical and critical study can also be compared to the one I made on Chinese alchemy ( see below), on the occasion of the publication of M. de Mély on the Chinese Lapidaries. The origins of Chinese alchemy and Indian alchemy probably have some connection, as do the origins of scientific astronomy in China and India.All these sciences, in their rational form, also seem to have originated in the West and to have penetrated as far as the Far East, by various routes and with various adventures, under the successive influences of Greek, Persian and Arab civilisations.

With regard to India in particular, the Kitab-al-fihrist contains only a vague sentence on the invention of alchemy (1) and the indication of a supposed alchemist, Khathif, said the Indian or the Frank (2). The first somewhat extended texts that we possess in this respect are contained in a chapter of the Arab Albirouni, a famous astronomer, mathematician and polygrapher, who lived at the beginning of the XI° century. His Work on India, known for a long time, was translated into English and published by Dr. Sachau in 1888. The alchemist doctrines are designated there under the name of Rasayana (science of mercury, relating to the manufacture of gold and the elixir of life ) . Albirouni speaks of it with little esteem and adds that the Indians did not pay particular attention to it, although no nation is completely exempt from this kind of study and imagination.He devotes a few pages to it, but without providing us with positive information on the doctrines specific to the Indians.

It is in other treatises that Albirouni set forth the theories of his time on the origin and formation of metals, theories which are precisely those of the Arabs, according to which metals would result from the combination of sulfur and mercury. I have exposed the history of these theories in detail, in the first volume of Chemistry in the Middle Ages (3); it is not useful to return to it, except to insist on this, that Albirouni does not point out any doctrine peculiar to the Indians, either older or different from these. Nor does Mr. Ray's Memoir provide any information in this regard. All that can be seen in this respect are the common alchemical claims, relating to the transmutation of metals and the manufacture of the elixir of life, intended to restore strength, to cure all diseases, to prolong existence and to restore youthful capacities ; I will come back to it presently.

Personal information relating to Indian alchemists only takes us to relatively modern dates. Indeed, the oldest name that is pronounced by Albirouni is that of Nâgârjuna, who would have lived a century earlier, that is to say in the tenth century; date itself doubtful, like all those connected with alchemical history, where forgers and pseudepigraphers abound. Whatbe it as it may, it is the Hermes Trismegistus of the Indian alchemists; and, as it happened for the Egyptian Hermes, for Geber and for many alchemical authors, more modern works have been put under his name. The very name of Nâgârjuna appears in the Buddhist canonical literature as that of the author of the Madhyamina system of philosophy, and it is traced back several centuries earlier, towards the third century of our era, when there was no trace of alchemy in India. The same thing also happened to the Egyptian Hermes (Toth), whose name and mythical role preceded its alchemical attributions by many centuries.

Nâgârjuna is quoted with respect, according to Mr. Rây, in the work entitled Rasendra chintamannis, that is to say the Jewels of the mercurial preparations written by Ram-Chandra towards the XII° or XIII° century. He is cited as the inventor of processes of sublimation, distillation, calcination, and he is credited with a treatise on magic, Yogaral namala. This alchemist is thereby linked to the tradition of the Tantras, which will be discussed later and more fully. His Works have been commented on by Gunakara, a somewhat mythical character;for he designates himself as a Buddha and claims to have written in the year 1240, a date which must only be accepted subject to the benefit of an inventory, the alchemists and magicians being subject to backdate their books, as attested, in the West, by the pseudo Raymond Lully and the pseudo Geber.

The history of Indian alchemical personages thus merges more and more with that of physicians and magicians, until we come to works better dated to the sixteenth century, such as the Bhavaprakasas, around 1550. We see in any case that the alchemical personages of India are of relatively modern date, and much later not only than the Egyptian-Greeks and the Syrians, but even the Arabs. This character of posteriority, which I have already pointed out for the Chinese, at least as regards the incontestable documents of their scientific literature, is still more striking for the Indian alchemists.

Indeed, one can establish it in a clearer way, by the technical examination of the facts announced in this order of writings. But, before proceeding to an intrinsic examination of the various medical and chemical treatises of the Indians, it is necessary to complete the characteristic of the origins of Indian alchemy, recalling its relations with the Tantras.

The Tantras represent a whole set of magical and mystical doctrines, which played an important role in Indian Buddhism. Burnouf devoted about thirty pages to this subject in his Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism (t. 1, p. 522-554). They are, according to him, treatises of a special physiognomy, in which the worship of gods of a bizarre or terrible character is allied to the monotheistic system and to the developments of northern Buddhism. It is a kind of mystical degeneration of pure Buddhist doctrine, somehow sullied by its mixture with superstitious, occult and magical practices, derived from the ancient religions of India.

The Tantra system was incorporated into Shivaism in the last days of Indian Buddhism, and it survived in Bengal after the decline and expulsion of the latter cult. Thus certain scholarly medical books contain separate chapters on alchemy, chapters which begin with an invocation to the god Shiva and his wife Parvati, to whom the origin of the arts intended for the cure of illnesses is attributed.

In any case, the Rasayana received a strong impetus from the tantric system, this system having become the point of departure, in India, of the real or alleged sciences, such as the astronomical, alchemical, magical sciences and the new medical doctrines based on the use of mercury, opposed to the ancient knowledge of simples and herbs .

A similar alliance between the positive sciences and the occult sciences characterized, around the same time, in China, Taoism. This same alliance had already occurred, many centuries before, in the West, between Gnostic mysticism, the ancient practices of magic and astrology and the new doctrines of alchemy. There was a sort of spontaneous affinity between these various groups of knowledge, partly real, partly chimerical, as I had occasion to develop in my history of the Origins of Alchemy. It is certainly curious to find a similar correlation in China and India;but the later date of the Indian and Chinese documents tends to allow us to admit that the alchemical doctrines came from the West, while acquiring a physiognomy specific to the Eastern civilizations, among which they were propagated in the state of mysterious teachings.

The medical applications of the Rasayana are particularly important in this respect. In fact, it is mainly from this side that the alchemists have acquired authority in the world. Syrian and Arab physicians were alchemists at the same time, as their entire authentic history shows, that of Avicenna, to limit myself to a single example. It was the same for Arnaud de Villeneuve and many other physicians of the Middle Ages. The alliance of medicine and alchemy was cemented from then on by the use of metallic and other remedies provided by chemistry.

Thus Indian physicians, from the twelfth or thirteenth century, divided drugs into two main classes: ancient drugs, derived from herbs, and called Vedic, and more recent drugs, derived from metals and especially mercury, drugs called tantric . “He who knows the properties of mercury is like a god; he who knows only the recipes of herbs and roots is like a man", he is said in the Raserdra chintamannis . The dreams of the transmutation of the philosophers' mercury and the elixir of long life are closely associated. These are joint traditions and which Paracelsus reproduced in the West, independently, in the 16th century.

The relationship between chemistry and medicine has not ceased to continue to the present day, and advances in organic chemistry have given it extraordinary extension and brilliance. In this respect, it seems indisputable that the Indians were in contact with Arab civilization, and especially with the caliphs. There was at that time a continual exchange between the medical knowledge of the two countries, Indian doctors coming to study in Baghdad, while Arab students went to India to learn the secrets of indigenous medicine and pharmacology. But with regard to the knowledge thus exchanged, we have only vague information. If it is true that the oldest learned medical writings of India contain no indication of borrowings from the Arabs,on the other hand, they do not contain any alchemical indications as such. However, we must note in the Indian Works the appearance of the name of Hippocrates, which plays such a great role in the Syriac writings (4). THE Journal of the German Oriental Society contains several interesting Memoirs in this respect, mentioned at the beginning of this article.

What are the positive knowledge in chemistry, attested by the Sanskrit writings which have come down to us? This is a question that is all the most important in that it makes it possible to specify a certain number of chronological data relating to Indian science and the successive borrowings it has made from the sciences of the West. Here is the information furnished in this respect by the indications of Professor Ray.

He cites, among others, the following Treatises, relating principally to mercurial preparations; remember that the word rasa means mercury in Sanskrit:

Rasendra sara sangraha, by GOPAL KRISHNA: "Collection of the principal mercurial preparations", Work probably written in the XIII° or XIV° century;
Rasendra chintamannis (14th century), “Jewels of mercurial preparations”;
Sarngadhara sanhila;
Chakra datta sangraha, Treatise on Pathology and Therapeutics, written, it is said, around the year 1040;
Rasaratna samuchaya, “Treasure of mercurial preparations”, with figures of distillation, sublimation, calcination apparatus;
Bhavaprakasas, written around 1550 .

All these works are handwritten. M. Ray refers to their analyses, published in the catalogs of India ONCE, Oxford, Janjore Palace, etc., and he reproduces extracts from them. - Note the relatively modern dates of these works, the oldest of which date from the 11th century, that is to say much later not only than the Greek and Syriac writings, but also the old Arab masters. In these extracts does not appear any alchemical doctrine properly speaking, but only technical details, especially appropriate to pharmaceutical and medical preparations; chemistry intervenes here only as an auxiliary to medicine.

Here is the literal translation of some fragments of the oldest of these treatises, the Rasendra sara sangraha :

"My name is Gopal Krishna. I composed this Treatise after consulting several Treatises written by various people who were knowledgeable in mercurial remedies.

Doctors prescribe other remedies for easily treatable patients; but the diseases deemed incurable involve only the treatment of mercurial drugs; hence the superiority of mercury over all the others."

We see that it is a time when mercury was attributed marvelous properties, even constituting the elixir of life. The author then describes the purification of mercury, either by washing or by sublimation. These are practical processes, without any mysticism.

To purify mercury, it is washed with a slurry containing dilute vinegar, because the latter dissolves lead and other metals that frequently alter mercury.

Mercury must be mixed with Indian aloe juice and turmeric powder and then subjected to sublimation.

General process of sublimation:

“Take 3 parts of powdered copper and one part of mercury. Mix, soak with lemon juice, put the mixture in a spherical vase; place this one in a pot of earth and place above another pot of earth, the concavity of which is turned upwards.

Lute the joints with clay and fill the upper vase with water. Now heat the lower pot: the mercury will be found deposited on the surface of the upper pot. Experienced physicians give preference to mercury purified by this process. »

Another method proceeds by distilling per descensum and condensing the mercury in the water of the lower vessel.

In another, the inclined neck of the vase, containing the mercury to be purified (mixed with sulphur, lemon juice, etc.), is inclined and joined to the orifice of another vase containing water.

"Mercury extracted from cinnabar. - The cinnabar is mixed with lemon juice and subjected to sublimation."

I think it superfluous to reproduce the recipes for preparing the black and red sulphides of mercury and the sublimated chlorides of mercury. All these descriptions are clear and precise. The apparatus indicated in the first place for mercury is essentially that of Dioscorides, transmitted without doubt through the intermediary of the Arabs. Indeed, the various mixtures used in these preparations are quite similar to those used by the Arab alchemists and by the Latins. They were complicated recipes, used in laboratories in the 13th century and transmitted from practitioner to practitioner in Europe and even in far Asia.

The very composition of the Rasendra sara sarzgraha singularly resembles, in its general turn, that of the Arab Treaties, or the Latin Treatises translated from Arabic in the 13th century, of which I have published the French translations and the analyzes in Volumes I and II of my History of Chemistry in the Middle Ages . Indeed, there are paragraphs:

1° On mercury preparations;
2° On salts of various origins: salt extracted from sea water, rock salt, etc. ;
3° Another on the urine of various animals: elephant, camel, donkey, horse, goats, sheep. I will recall that the urine played in the preparations of the XIIIth century the role of our volatile alkali, because of the formation of the latter in their decomposition;
4° Another paragraph relates to dravakas, fluxes or solvents, brought together in the same group, which included both the red and black berries of the Abrus precatorius , honey, molasses, clarified butter and “borax”.
This last expression did not have the sense of borax of modern chemists; but she applied herself; in reality to any alkaline liquor, derived either from natron, or from the washings of vegetable ashes;
5° The Sarngadhara furnishes more circumstantial details on these last lyes, which represented the fixed alkalis in the chemistry of that time;
6° In the same way, the acids were represented by vinegar and various vegetable juices: lemon juice, juice of oxalis and rumex, etc. Let us insist on this fundamental fact, from the historical point of view, namely that no mineral acid properly so called appears in these Works, even in the XVI° century;
7. Then come various mineral substances: sulphur, talc, bitumen, realgar, orpiment, pyrites of iron and copper and the impure sulphates (vitriols) which result from their spontaneous decomposition, sulphide of antimony, red ocher, etc.

In sum, there was no great progress on the materia medica of Dioscorides, faithfully reproduced by the Arabs. However, the latter added to it, at the same time or after the Greek alchemists, various mercurial compounds and especially the sublime chlorides (calomel and corrosive sublimate): now the Indian chemists faithfully reproduce the recipes.

Chapter II of the Rasendra sara sangraha is characteristic in this respect; it is devoted to the description of the processes suitable for bringing the various metals into soluble forms, suitable for their administration as remedies inside the human body. The seven metals are also studied there successively: gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, iron and brass [considered as a proper metal, no doubt by a memory of the old Electrum (5)], as well as the preparations which derive from these various metals, as much by roasting, oxidation, sulfurization, as by wet process. This recalls the composition of the Arabic-Latin Treatises, and in particular Book VI of Avicenna's Alchemy, Books III and IV of Bubacar [pseudo Rasés (6)], etc.

The following chapters of the Indian work are devoted to the treatment of diseases by the association of metallic preparations with vegetable drugs.

In summary, the positive information contained in the preceding texts, on the state of the chemical knowledge of the Indians, does not carry us back any earlier than the 11th or 11th century and their tradition itself does not go back beyond the 10th century. This knowledge does not go further than that of the Arabs and the Latins, at the same time, and they return more or less to the same framework of facts and medical applications; let us add that the preparations and the apparatus are the same, without any essential addition. To complete this study, it would be useful to know the technical processes of goldsmiths and ceramists, on which the preceding writings do not seem to provide information.

Indeed India was already the seat of an advanced civilization at the time of its contact with the Greeks. There certainly existed a long tradition of practices relating to the manufacture of weapons and metal utensils, as well as that of jewelry, the use of shiny metals and precious stones, as well as the various ceramic arts. But no written trace of these industries appears in the Works that have come to my knowledge; the traces of a theoretical science are also lacking.

Let us return to the Treatises on Alchemy of the Middle Ages which I am examining at the moment.

With regard to the devices, the drawings sent to me by Mr. Rây reproduce the aludel of the Arabs, as I represented it in my Introduction to the Study of the Chemistry of the Ancients (p.172), and various figures of distilling devices, direct or per descensum , sand baths, etc., all figures whose analogues are found in the Bibliotheca Chemica of Manget. — They especially resemble very much the figures of the Syriac manuscripts, reproduced in the second volume (Syriac Alchemy ) of my history of Chemistry by means of age; such are a still on page 108 of this last volume, a digestion and sublimation vessel (p. 109), a digestion apparatus with cases or sheaths (p. 118), &c. These Syriac devices are moreover the oldest among those of the Arabs.

It is only in the Indian works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that we meet, according to M. Ray, more modern preparations, such as those of hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric acids, saltpeter, aqua regia.

To clarify, remember that the doctors of “Tamil” prepared sulfuric acid (gundakka attar , spirit of sulfur) by burning sulfur with nitre in earthen vessels. They obtained hydrochloric acid by reacting alum with sea salt; nitric acid, by means of saltpeter and alum; aqua regia, by distilling a mixture of saltpetre, sal ammonia, alum and green vitriol in a glass retort. Our saltpeter itself was not described in India until a comparatively modern period; it has no Sanskrit name.

It was, however, a natural saline deposit of the soil of Bengal, an article which has become the object of considerable export. It is probable that its manufacture, strictly speaking, was not introduced into India until after the adoption of gunpowder in warfare, around the fifteenth or sixteenth century.

Let us observe here that the processes which have just been mentioned, such as those for the manufacture of acids, are precisely the processes employed by European chemists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, processes which were transformed in the eighteenth century and even more profoundly in our time. Such processes could not reach India until the time of the Mogul Empire and the conquests of European, Portuguese, Dutch and English navigators.

In summary, the chemical science of the Indians seems to derive its origin from a double importation: one made from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, which offers the characteristics of Arab science of the time, and it was undoubtedly introduced by exchanges of ideas which took place at the time of the caliphs of Baghdad. The other was accomplished from the sixteenth century down to our time and offers the characteristics of modern European science. The facts reported in this article help to establish that this double importation ultimately finds its origins, indirect or direct, in Western science.

Such are the results that seem to me likely to be drawn from the facts recorded in Professor Ray's very interesting communication. I must say that this opinion is not in conformity with his; because he believes in the originality of Indian alchemy, but rather from a feeling of national glory than from positive proofs. Be that as it may, its study provides us with the opportunity to establish new points of reference and a most important milestone in research relating to the history of the origins of the sciences and their propagation through humanity.

VI. - Indian alchemy, according to the texts.

A HISTORY OF HINDU CHEMISTRY from the earliest times to the middle of the sixteenth Century AD, with Sanskrit texts, variants, translations and illustrations, by Praphulla Chandra Rây, D. SC., professor of chemistry, Presidency College, Calcutta. - Flight. 1, Calcutta, 1902; LXXIX-176 pages, 10 figures and two indexes, Sanskrit texts, 1-41.

A few years ago, Professor Rây communicated to me a handwritten memoir in 43 pages, on the history of Indian chemistry and alchemy, memoir of which I have published a critical analysis reproduced in the preceding article. Since then, on my encouragement, the Hindu scholar has continued his research and deepened his first attempts. Helped by the assistance of Mr. Alexandre Pedler, Director of Public Instruction in Bengal, he was able to acquaint himself with older manuscripts, taken from the libraries of Benares, Madras, and Cashmere, as well as publications printed from various other manuscripts. One of these latter manuscripts in particular, the Bower manuscript, is reputed to have been written in the 5th century AD. The others are of unequal dates, sometimes recent;but they contain treatises to which a more or less remote antiquity is attributed.

I will first recall this well-known fact that the Works transcribed in a manuscript and particularly the technical or theoretical Works are likely to contain, alongside the texts to which the copyist attributes a remote date, additions made at different times, the most recent possibly being contemporary with the last copy; the date of the latter is therefore the only completely certain one. These additions have often been made without any intention of fraud, simply to complete the study of the questions dealt with; but it has sometimes happened that their object has been to predate certain facts, certain names, or certain doctrines. If I make this observation on the occasion of the Hindu manuscripts, it is because I have had occasion to note and discuss numerous examples of this order in my history of Chemistry in the Middle Ages; particularly with regard to the Works attributed to Hermès and, later, to Geber.

The same thing happened in India for the semi-mythical and semi-historical personage who bears the name of Nagarjunà. Among his successors, there also exist, alongside a historical Vagbhata, works of which a more modern pseudo Vagbhata has declared himself the author. The criticism of this kind of works and especially that of the alchemical writings requires much prudence and sagacity.

Be that as it may, we must thank Mr. Ray for the care with which he has assembled the materials of a difficult and obscure study, and for the valuable details and comments which appear in his publication.

A First reflection comes to mind, after reading his history of Indian chemistry; it is that this story is more medical than chemical. In a word, Chemistry is here everywhere subordinated to Medicine: it is a question of medical doctrines and recipes rather than chemical or alchemical doctrines. Methodical descriptions relating to the study and preparation of metals and other substances hardly appear in these writings until the 14th and 15th centuries.

In the extracts from the old Treatises that M. Rây presents to us, we find almost nothing resembling the Systematic Treatises of Zosimus and the Greco-Egyptian alchemists, as we know them from the Collection of texts by ancient Greek chemists, or from that of texts translated by the Syrians (7 ) .

The extracts published by M. Ray do not contain any alchemical text properly speaking, with the exception of a few vague phrases and a few mystical invocations.

This absence of precise alchemical documents in the oldest Indian texts can be explained in two ways: either Mr. Ray was not aware of the Alchemical Treatises of this order, assuming that they were preserved; or, and rather, these Treatises never existed: I mean existed with the long developments of doctrines and procedures that we read in Western alchemical texts, written in the first five or six centuries of our era. We can explain this absence of ancient texts, if we admit that the alchemical doctrines and imaginations would not have developed spontaneously in India, but that they would have been imported there later, by the infiltration of Syro-Arab ideas and works; an import which hardly appears except from the 8th to the 10th century of our era. Gold,

In any case, there is a problem here that needs to be clarified: the discovery of the smallest original texts would be precious in this respect; but it would be necessary to publish these complete texts, other than by extracts, and without addition, mutilation or mixture of interpretation of the editor, or of the copyists. It is on this condition only that the clues to their true origin could be put beyond doubt.

We also lack another order of historical data, which would be indispensable to discuss exactly the true parentage of chemical and alchemical ideas and practices in India; these are the technical recipe notebooks of Indian goldsmiths, painters, dyers, ceramists and metallurgists, at different times. We know how far the working of metals and that of the decorative industries have been carried in India, and what feeling of a delicate decorative art is manifested in the ancient or modern objects which come from this country. Mr. Ray has taken care to devote a certain number of pages of his book to the description of the current practices of Indian artisans.

Certainly these descriptions are very interesting; but they refer only to modern and contemporary times. It would be valuable for the history of Indian chemistry and alchemy to possess texts analogous either to the Leiden papyrus, which provided me with the key to the Democritan Treatises, or to the Compositiones and the Mappoe Clavicula ,which allowed me to observe the maintenance of the traditions of ancient alchemy in the West after the fall of the Roman Empire and until the thirteenth century, that is to say until the moment when Western science was reborn, with the double resources borrowed, on the one hand, from the recipes of industrial technique preserved in Europe and, on the other hand, from Greek and Byzantine works and Arab treatises of various kinds, brought from Spain and the East and translated into Latin at the time of the Crusaders. Has.

Have these treatises of the old Indian technique disappeared, through the effect of the contempt of the priestly castes for the professions of artisans? Or did they never exist in India, being limited to additional practices, where there was no support for those theoretical ideas from which art and industry have never ceased to draw inspiration in the West? We see that we always find the same doubt about the antiquity of chemical science properly speaking in India: I am not speaking of chemical practices, which are as old as civilization.

Perhaps the discovery of some unpublished document, hitherto hidden in Indian libraries, will one day shed light on these problems; provided, of course, that this document is taken from well-dated manuscripts that predate Greek, Arabic and Western influences, which have left their mark in the works composed or copied in modern times.

I don't want to dwell on these desiderata any longer; but it seemed to me necessary to point out the almost complete absence of authentic documents relating to the original doctrines of the Indian chemists properly speaking, before their contact with Arab civilization. It would be quite unfair in this regard to invoke the absence of this order of texts, the existence of which there is no clue, to criticize the work of M. Rây, who has devoted a long and conscientious work to summarizing with care and intelligence the materials that have come into his hands. We should, on the contrary, express the greatest gratitude to him for those whom he makes known to us.If I make the above observations, it is because it is essential to clarify the questions relating to the controversial origins of the sciences of the Far East,

I will now try to summarize the points that struck me the most while reading the history of Indian chemistry.

In the introduction to the history of Indian chemistry and in the work itself, Mr. Rây considers successively the following periods:

I. Chemical notions in the Vedas;
II. Ayurvedic period (pre-Buddhist times until around AD 800);
III. The so-called transition period (from the year 800 to 1100 AD);
IV. Tantric period (from the year 1100 to 1300);
V. Iatrochemical period (from the year 1300 to 1550).

Perhaps the demarcation between these periods is not always clearly defined, especially between the last three. I will confine myself to following this division in a general way.

The period of the Vedas is known above all from largely mythical documents. During this period, among the Indians as among the Egyptians, all human action and especially medicine and the industrial arts are pursued by bringing together natural agents and the influence of supernatural beings, solicited by the incantations and practices of magic and witchcraft.

In the Rig Veda, the Acwins, deities analogous to the Greek Dioscuri, are invoked as divine doctors. The soma, fermented juice, is the object of a special adoration and regarded as the amrita (ambrosia of the Greeks), divine liquid that makes one hundred years old. In the atharvaveda, the agents used to treat disease are plants and their products; but their use is invariably associated with that of charms and invocations. We read in them incantations intended to bring ruin, death, madness, stupor to the adversaries. The love of women is secured by vegetable philtres, added to certain spells. Later, in the Mahâbâhrata, gold is associated with the Sun and regarded as an elixir of life, while lead is an agent of sorcery;but this poem is mixed with later elements.

The analogues of these beliefs and practices are found among the Greeks, without there being any reason to believe in any borrowing properly speaking on either side, that is to say invoking anything other than a certain community of original traditions.

The Ayurvedic period presents a more positive character. It responds to the actual historical period of the Greeks and Romans. At this time, chemistry was not yet separated either from medicine or from the industrial arts. But the doctor has become distinct from the priest.

Before going into more detail on the relations which then manifested themselves between the practices of medicine and that of chemistry, which were always closely linked to each other, it is necessary to briefly outline the philosophical ideas of the Indians of this period on the constitution of matter. Indeed, it is also the period of the great philosophical systems, agitated with method and depth. I do not have the necessary philological competence to speak here of the prevailing discussions relative to the date of these systems and especially to the influence they may have suffered from Greek philosophy, or exerted on it, particularly in the Alexandrian period.

Let us confine ourselves to recalling, with Colebrooke, the Samkhya and Vaideshika systems and particularly the concepts relating to the constitution of matter. According to Kapila, author of the Samkhya system, there are five orders of subtle or radical particles called Tanmatra, not perceptible to the gross senses of man, although perceptible to beings of a higher order. They generate five grosser elements: earth, water, fire, air and space (or ethereal fluid). The ethereal element is the vehicle of sound, perceptible by the sense of hearing and derived from the ethereal sound radical. The aerial element is perceptible by the senses of hearing and touch; it derives from the tangible air radical.The igneous element is perceptible by the senses of hearing, touch and sight; it derives from the colored radical of fire. The aqueous element is perceptible by the senses of hearing, touch, sight and taste; it derives from the sapid radical of water. The earthy element is perceptible by the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell; it derives from the odorant radical of the earth. Thus, to each sense corresponds to a distinct sensible element, derived from an imperceptible radical.

This doctrine of the elements is analogous to that of Empedocles, but with more subtle details and the addition of the element ether. It was developed and combined with logical notions, reminiscent of Aristotle, and with an atomic theory analogous to that of Democritus expounded by Kanada, founder of the Vaideshika system. According to this system, the objects perceived by the senses are characterized by six categories.

But it would be departing from my subject to enter into the exposition of these subtleties. After specifying these categories and defining substance, as resulting from the association of qualities and action, the philosopher describes the properties of earth and water, both eternal as atoms, but transitory as aggregates; those of light, which he assimilates to heat: terrestrial light, such as that of ordinary fire, and celestial light, such as that of lightning and meteors, &c. Gold is constituted by light solidified by the mixture of some earthy parts, etc. Kanada then exposes his conception of simple or primary atoms, which are eternal, then that of binary, ternary, quaternary atoms, etc.

I will not pursue further the developments of his system. Let us observe, however, that this order of half-physical, half-metaphysical conceptions and imaginations recalls those of the Greek philosophers, from Democritus and Leucippus, inventors of the atoms, down to Plato, in his Timaeus, and Aristotle, in his Meteorological . It is easy to point out certain striking analogies between the Indian philosophers and the Greek philosophers.

A reciprocal influence was really exerted between the two regions and civilizations, after the Macedonian conquest and the foundation of the Greek kingdoms of Bactria. It is manifest in the Alexandrian period, that is to say in the neighboring centuries of the Christian era: the name of Buddha was known to Clement of Alexandria. The antedated legends relating to Pythagoras and the fabulous biography of Apollonius of Tyana have preserved the trace of these contacts. In any case, if there was some borrowing from the side of the Indians, it is undeniable that the Greek ideas were reworked by them in an original way and underwent a new elaboration, the greater subtlety and the more multiplied distinctions of which seem to show the posterior character.

Let us now return to the more especially chemical works of the Indian genius. These, as I have said, relate to medicine and materia medica. From this point of view, the end of the period which we are studying at the moment is represented by two great works, the Charaka and the Susruta, whose origin would be very ancient, but whose definitive redaction, as we possess it, seems to contain, alongside fragments of remote and uncertain date, writings very posterior to the Christian era, writings based moreover on the Vaideshika system. The science of life (Ayurveda) is regarded as a secondary science; it is moreover a direct revelation from the gods, a branch of the Atharveda.

Let's first talk about the authors of these compilations.

Mr. Sylvain Lévy found in the Chinese Tripitaka the name of Charaka, as spiritual guide of the Indoscythian king Kanisha, in the 2nd century of our era (8), and he links it to a Greek tradition. But the word Charaka, according to Mr. Rây, would be a collective appellation, which would go back much further.

In any case, the work that bears this name would have gone through several redactions or revisions, among others that of Vagbhata, several centuries later than the Christian era. This book (lost today), would have been translated into Arabic, by order of the caliphs, around the VIII° or IX° century of our era, at the same time as another book called Nidana .

Later came a new wording, attributed to Nagarjuna, a famous Buddhist chemist, a semi-legendary personage, a sort of Hermes Trismegistus, whom the Indians regard as the inventor of distillation and calcination. In fact, this would thus indicate the VIII° or the IX° century to us, like the time when the Indians knew these last methods, discoveries. by the Greco-Egyptian alchemists of the first centuries of our era, that is to say several centuries before the caliphate. It was, in fact, towards the end of the sixth century that they were taught to the Arabs (9), through whom they appear to have been communicated to the peoples of the Far East.

The Susruta would be less ancient than the Charaka; the review would also have been made by Nagarjunà. This is the place to observe that the Charaka and the Susruta are not Books of Chemistry, the Charaka being a book of Medicine proper and the Susruta a book of Surgery. The name of Susruta, like that of Charaka, is attributed, in the Indian works, to several personages of different dates and who seem foreign to medicine. This name appears in particular in the Bower manuscript [5th century of our era (?)].

The oldest commentary on the Susruta is the Bhanumati, by Chakrapani Datta, who lived around the year 1060: the text of the Susruta was then the object of careful attention to maintain its purity.

This is the summary of the information provided by Mr. Ray. He strongly refutes an opinion recently developed by the learned Orientalist Haas, according to which the name of Susruta would be the Arabic corruption of that of Hippocrates, changed first to Socrates, all of this, moreover, in accordance with what frequently happened in these successive transcriptions of Greek names.

As an analogous example, I ask permission to recall the strange confusion that exists in the Treatises on Syriac Alchemy between Hippocrates and Democritus (10), as well as the transcriptions of Greek names in the Turba philosophorum (11 ) . Confusions of this kind are well known to all Orientalists.

The humoral system of the Indian authors has also been brought closer, founded. on the three humours: air, bile and phlegm, from that of the Greeks: blood, bile, water, phlegm. I do not pretend to set myself up as arbiter of this order of questions: however, similar analogies may have occurred to the minds of physicians of different peoples. They seem too vague to allow firm conclusions. If they were better established, perhaps they could be related to some more ancient common tradition, originating, for example, in Chaldea, as claimed by Terrien de la Couperie.

Here is some more information provided by Mr. Ray. In the Charaka and the Susruta, a distinction is made between drugs of terrestrial or mineral origin, of vegetable origin and of animal origin.

Among the mineral drugs, we first cite: gold, which is set apart; the five metals: silver, copper, lead, tin, iron, and gold which are called their impurities (12) or bitumens (?), that is to say their oxides and other compounds. Then come: red arsenic, realgar and orpiment; sulphide antimony; the salts, five in number; sand, gems, pyrites and their derivatives (vitriols) corresponding to misy and sory of the Greeks (13); all simple drugs used in medicine. Their description and the treatments to which they are subjected, washing, roasting, infusions and mixtures, recall the Treatise of Dioscorides: not that there is direct borrowing and translation, but rather transmission by intermediaries, with certain modifications in the processes.Sulfur is also associated with herbal drugs, these borrowed especially from plants of India. Finally come the drugs of animal origin: blood, bile, sperm, urine (eight varieties depending on the animal), horn, hair, bones, etc.

This distinction of drugs into three categories, animal, vegetable, mineral, still recalls the symbolic nomenclature of the Arab alchemists (14) and especially that of Avicenna (real or pretended). One could see in it a sign of origin, the ancient Greek alchemists not using this nomenclature.

The poisons are also divided into minerals, plants, animals.

The use of ash lyes and especially that of calcined limestone, to change them into caustic alkaline solutions, described in the Treatise which I am summarizing, seem to me to indicate a more modern addition, derived by sees directly or indirectly from the practices of European chemists.

On the contrary, one must point out as essentially Indian an extended discussion on the distinction of tastes, their number, their relation to the five primordial elements; likewise the classes of food, derived from the five elements, possessing the six tastes and the two properties of hot and cold.

Finally, let us observe that in the Charaka and the Susruta there is only one reference relating to mercury: which is an indication of anteriority with respect to the subsequent period of mercury medicine.

In this respect and to bring us closer to the history of Chemistry and its own doctrines, of which there is hardly any question in what precedes, we can add that the primitive Indian pharmacopoeia, such as it appears in the preceding works, does not contain metallic salts, nor especially these mercury preparations characteristic of the Tantric period.

On the contrary, this order of preparations established its authority in the eleventh century, in the works of Vrinda and Chakrapani Datta, commentators of Charaka and Susruta. At the same time, they recommend bringing in the cabalistic prayers of the tantric cult, as auxiliaries to some of their preparations.

At this same time, Alchemy properly so called appeared clearly in India, according to Albirouni, especially as an auxiliary to Medicine. Albirouni adds that the Indians designate their alchemical science under the name of Rasayana, and that it teaches the proper processes to restore youth and lengthen life, that is to say the manufacture of the elixir of long life. This production. is, as always, congener with that of gold and the philosopher's stone.

The word rasa itself originally designated the blood-generating chyle; but it has since been reserved for mercury and its various compounds. The theories expounded by Albirouni on the constitution of metals, as formed from sulfur and mercury, are those of the Arabs. Alchemy was in honor in India, mainly during the Tantric period, from the 12th to the 14th century.

At that time, mystical and magical ideas played a great role in Indian Buddhism, the original purity of which had been altered by the worship of Siva and certain strange deities, remnants of the ancient religions of India. The positive sciences and the occult sciences are joined there in a singular amalgam, which one finds in Chinese Taoism, as well as in the ancient traditions of Western Gnosticism, the latter much earlier as a date. These practices may date back to the very origins of the human species; Chaldea and Egypt knew them. They were therefore associated with the first scientific doctrines.In any case, the cult of Siva, already established in India in the twelfth century of our era, with the phallus as its emblem, contains a mixture of alchemical procedures and obscene rites.

Around the 11th century, chemical knowledge is exposed among others in the Rasaratnakara, always attributed to Nagarjnnà, whose name thus takes on a kind of generic character, and in the Rasarnava (mercury sea), one of the Tantras of the cult of Siva. The philosophers' mystical notion of mercury, a supposed element of metals, then appears, associated and confused with the knowledge of mercury itself. But the Tantras join to these general notions, congeneric with those of the Greek and Arab alchemists, mystical ideas of an original character. “It is by mercury, says the last work, that the body is made imperishable, so as to remove it from the necessity of death. Indeed, the body, as composed of the six sheaths of the soul, is dissolvable;while the body created by Hara and Gauri (referred to as mercury and mica) is permanent. The ascetic who aspires to "liberation" in this life must first make for himself a glorious body, engendered like mercury by the creative conjunction of Hara and Gauri. “Their combination, O goddess (15), destroys death and poverty. The author here cites the names of the sages who attained "liberation" in this present life, acquiring a divine (or mercurial) body through the efficacy of mercury. Fixed mercury cures diseases; the quenched (deadened, mortified) mercury raises the dead; it is a supreme medicine, which renders the body incorruptible and imperishable. The adoration of the sacred mercury is more beatific than the work of all the phallic emblems.In the The ascetic who aspires to "liberation" in this life must first make for himself a glorious body, engendered like mercury by the creative conjunction of Hara and Gauri. “Their combination, O goddess (15), destroys death and poverty. The author here cites the names of the sages who attained "liberation" in this present life, acquiring a divine (or mercurial) body through the efficacy of mercury. Fixed mercury cures diseases; the quenched (deadened, mortified) mercury raises the dead; it is a supreme medicine, which renders the body incorruptible and imperishable. The adoration of the sacred mercury is more beatific than the work of all the phallic emblems. In theThe ascetic who aspires to "liberation" in this life must first make for himself a glorious body, engendered like mercury by the creative conjunction of Hara and Gauri. “Their combination, O goddess (15), destroys death and poverty. The author here cites the names of the sages who attained "liberation" in this present life, acquiring a divine (or mercurial) body through the efficacy of mercury. Fixed mercury cures diseases; the quenched (deadened, mortified) mercury raises the dead; it is a supreme medicine, which renders the body incorruptible and imperishable. The adoration of the sacred mercury is more beatific than the work of all the phallic emblems. In the “Their combination, O goddess (15), destroys death and poverty.The author here cites the names of the sages who attained "liberation" in this present life, acquiring a divine (or mercurial) body through the efficacy of mercury. Fixed mercury cures diseases; the quenched (deadened, mortified) mercury raises the dead; it is a supreme medicine, which renders the body incorruptible and imperishable. The adoration of the sacred mercury is more beatific than the work of all the phallic emblems. In the “Their combination, O goddess (15), destroys death and poverty. The author here cites the names of the sages who attained "liberation" in this present life, acquiring a divine (or mercurial) body through the efficacy of mercury. Fixed mercury cures diseases;the quenched (deadened, mortified) mercury raises the dead; it is a supreme medicine, which renders the body incorruptible and imperishable. The adoration of the sacred mercury is more beatific than the work of all the phallic emblems. In the mortified) raises the dead; it is a supreme medicine, which renders the body incorruptible and imperishable. The adoration of the sacred mercury is more beatific than the work of all the phallic emblems. In the mortified) raises the dead; it is a supreme medicine, which renders the body incorruptible and imperishable. The adoration of the sacred mercury is more beatific than the work of all the phallic emblems. In theReview of Philosophical Systems, by Madhavacharya, Chief Abbot of Sringeri Monastery in 1331, the sixth system is referred to as the Mercurial System. Mercury is called. seed of Siva, a name which recalls the seed of Hermes and the symbolic nomenclature of the sacred scribes of Egypt (16), reproduced in part by Dioscorides and by Avicenna (17). In Marco Polo we find this opinion that the Indian sages live from 150 to 200 years, using a strange beverage containing sulfur and mercury. Thus, from a mystical symbolism, the Indians had passed to a positive medical interpretation and to the preparation of metallic medicines.

The material application of these doctrines and mystical symbolism was to be made only by initiates; otherwise their literal consequences were likely to result in poisonings. This is what seems to have happened in China, where several emperors, around the tenth century, were, it is said, victims of the use of remedies intended to procure them immortality.

In any case, we are here in India in an alchemical period: the nickname Vagbhata gives us the names of 37 renowned alchemists.

We see by these exact details that the development of this science, half real, half chimerical, was late in India. Its flowering only really took place in the Tantric period. If it seems certain, according to the texts of the Arab annalists, that the caliphs Haroun and Mansour had some works of Indian medicine translated in Baghdad, at the same time as Greek and Syriac works, we do not know what these works contained and nothing allows us to suppose that they contain chemical notions properly so called.

The theories reported in Albirouni and in Indian authors of certain date have the character of doctrines derived from those of the Arab chemists, which themselves are connected, through the intermediary of the Syrians, with those of the Greco-Egyptian alchemists. The Indians have given these doctrines their imprint and a certain original figure by incorporating them into their religious systems.

Let us quote, according to M. Rây, extracts from the oldest works which contain precise chemical information:

The Tantras entitled Rasarnava ( 12th century) (mercury sea) exposes science in the form of a dialogue between Siva and his wife Parvati. Mercury is reputed to be composed of five elements and equated with Siva himself. In this work one finds the description of numerous apparatuses and chemical preparations.

The author insists on the proper processes for killing the mercury, that is to say, for deadening it, as we still say today, by reducing it to powder; especially to prepare vermilion with sulfur and mercury. All metals can be killed with a mixture of green vitriol, rock salt, pyrite, sulfur, natron, and various plant ingredients.

It will be noticed that the death of metals and their resurrection are common expressions in alchemy.

Our author also teaches how to dye metals, especially copper, by treating it with calamine; which, he says, changes it to gold (brass).

The Rasaratnasamuchchaya, a work written between the 14th and 11th centuries, is declared at the beginning to be the work of Vagbhata, son of Simhagupta, prince of doctors: it is still a pseudonym. His Treatise is a methodical exposition of chemistry as it was then known; it deals with mercury, minerals and metals, the construction of apparatus, mystical formulas for the purification of metals, the extraction of active principles, fusion, incineration.

The virtues of mercury are exalted there: “Its use frees man from a multitude of diseases. The god of fire makes it flow in Dardistan, a mountainous region of Kashmir where there are cinnabar mines. He who obtains mercury, prepared with the help of magic and mystical rites, assures his followers of happiness and health, wealth, the power to transmute metals and prolong life. »

Book II then deals with rasas, ores and especially mercurial metallic products.

Book III treats of the uparasas or lower rasas, such as sulphur, red ochre, vitriol, alum, sulphides of arsenic, orpiment and realgar, sal ammonia, cinnabar, etc. It describes the varieties of each species of drug, its purification, its treatment with different plant juices and liquids, etc.

In Book IV are enumerated the gems or precious stones, which have played such a great role in the world from the earliest times. Orientals always hold them in special esteem. They are examined here from the point of view of materia medica. The following are mentioned in particular: diamond, pearl, sunstone (carbuncle?), moonstone (selenite), lapis lazuli, emerald, topaz, sapphire, coral, etc.

Book V examines the properties of pure metals: gold, silver, and iron, and those of foul-smelling metals, lead, and tin. There are five varieties of gold, three of which are mythical and of celestial origin, one drawn from ores, one obtained by transmutation. Silver has three varieties, iron three, pewter two, etc.

In Book VI, it is about the initiation and the discipline of the adepts.

Book VII describes the laboratory and its utensils; Book VIII, technical terms; Book IX, the apparatuses.

In Book XI, specially devoted to mercury, the purification of this metal must be carried out "on a day of good omen and under a favorable star".

I will not push this summary of the analyzes of M. Ray any further, having already published detailed details on the work of this learned professor relating to the works of Indian chemistry of later date, the study of which he undertook; but I cannot end my article without thanking him once again for having carried out this long and painful work, and for having pointed out and analyzed the new works whose existence he reveals to us. It is an interesting chapter added to the history of the Sciences and of the human mind, a chapter particularly useful for the knowledge of the reciprocal intellectual relations which have existed between Eastern and Western civilizations.


(1) Chemistry in the Middle Ages, vol. III: Arab Alchemy, p. 40.
(2) Volume 1, page 29.
(3) Pages 281, 291.
(4) Chemistry in the Middle Ages, vol. II: Syriac Alchemy, p. 314 et seq.,
(5) Chemistry in the Middle Ages, vol. 1, p. 305.
(6) Ibid., p. 308-309.
(7) See my Works on this Collection and on Chemistry in the Middle Ages, t. I and II. T.XLIX. - No. 2.
(8) Asian Journal, vol. VIII, 1896, p. 447.
(9) See the stories relating to Morienus or Marianus, a Greek Christian monk, and his disciple Calid : Chemistry in the Middle Ages, t. I , p. 242 and 246, and t. III, p. 2.
(10) Chemistry in the Middle Ages, vol. II , p. XL and 314 .
(11) Chemistry in the Middle Ages, vol. I, p. ,257 .
(11) This word recalls the denomination ioV , rust, venom, virus, of Pliny, applied by the Greek alchemists to oxides: Introduction to the Chemistry of the Ancients, p. 14.
(13) Same work, p 243.
(14) Chemistry arch middle ages , t. I, p 299 and 303.
(14) Paruati, associate of Siva.
(15) Introduction to the Chemistry of the Ancients, p. 11.
(16) Chemistry in the Middle Ages, vol. I , p. 303. T.XLIX. - No. 2.
(17) In Chinese : Ho han san ts'ai' t'ou hoei.