A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D., with Sanskrit Texts, Variants, Translation and Illustrations

Abstract

THE origin of Hindu chemistry is hidden in the obscurity of past ages. It is certain that the alchemists of western Europe owed much of their learning to the Arabs. M. Berthelot, in “Les Origines de l'Alchemie,”has shown that the Arabs derived many of their ideas from the Greeks, but Dr. Ray quotes other weighty opinions, and furnishes additional evidence in support of the view that the Arabs were even more indebted to the Hindus. In the eighth century the Caliphs of Bagdad ordered several of the medical works of India to be translated, and both then and later learned Arabs were sent to India to study science. Not content with pointing out these facts, Dr. Ray reminds his readers that the Greeks themselves derived their knowledge of many things from the Hindus, who had, for example, solved the 47th proposition of the first book of Euclid, 200 years before the birth of Pythagoras. Relying on this and similar evidence, Dr. Rǎy places the date of the works of Vǎghbata at some time before the eighth century A.D., and the surgical and medical treatises of Susruta and Charaka many centuries earlier, in pre-Buddha times. The last-named book, however, “embodies the deliberations of an international congress of medical experts, held in the Himalayan regions,”and the fourth veda, the Atharva-veda, appears so archaic by its side that it must be older by “probably a thousand years or more.” In the Atharva-veda “plants and vegetable products in general are fully recognised as helpful agents in the treatment of diseases,” and at that period (say 2000 B.C.) alchemical notions had already gathered round gold and lead, gold being regarded as the elixir of life, and lead as the dispeller of sorcery.

A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D., with Sanskrit Texts, Variants, Translation and Illustrations.

By Prafulla Chandra Ry, Professor of Chemistry, Presidency College, Calcutta. Vol. i. Pp. lxxix + 176 + 41. (London and Oxford: Williams and Norgate, 1902.) Price 12s. 6d. net.