Rasa-Jala-Nidhi Ocean of Indian Chemistry & Alchemy (5 Volumes)

by Kaviraj Budheb Mookerji

It is indeed very creditable to you to have carried on your research in Indian Chemistry and to publish the results in such comprehensive form. The publication is sure to attract the attention of all those who are interested in making available to the public the past achievements in the field of science in India.

It is an almost universal belief with the educated people of modern times that the world was created only a few thousand years ago and that the oldest civilization cannot date farther back than, say, twenty five thousand years before Christ. This assumption would seem to be most absurd to those who have entered into the spirit of the ancient Indian culture, unbiassed by any judgment passed by modern scholars on the antiquity of such a culture. The idea of the absolute creation of the Universe out of nothing, at a particular point of time, is more than an ordinary human being can conceive, in as much as it involves an attribution to God of such human characteristics as desire, want, and striving for the attainment of an wished for object, and thus reduces him to the level of an imperfect and human being.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1

1. Requisites for metallurgical Operations

Chapter 2

2. Initiation of Disciple

Chapter 3

3. Mercury
4. Attributes of Mercury

Mercurial Operations-

(1) Purification of Mercury
(2) Boiling
(3) Rubbing
(4) Raising
(5) Sublimation

Upward sublimation of Mercury

Downward sublimation

(6) Confinement
(7) Restraint
(8) Stimulation
(9) Rehabilitation

Easy process of absolute purification of mercury

(10) Swallowing of metals by mercury
(11) Swooning of Mercury
(12) Movement
(13) Internal Liquefaction of mercury
(14) Exhaustion
(15) Killing
(16) Incineration

Chapter 4

(17) Dyeing of mercury
(18) Transformation of base metals into gold by mercury

Chapter 5

Apparata
Crucibles
Putams

Chapter 6

Definitions
Measures of weight
Different classes of solidification of mercury

Chapter 7

Additional processes for transformation of base metals into gold and silver
Appendix –Glossary

Vol. 2

Chapters

1. Uparasas
2. Gandhaka (Sulphur)
3. Kampilla
4. Metals

Glossary

Appendix

Vol. 3

Chapters

1. Lauha (iron)
2. Jasoda (Zinc)
3. Mixed metals –Pittala (brass) –its varieties
4. Ratnas (gems)
5. Ksharas (alkalis)
6. Lavanas (salts)
7. Poisons
8. Upabisha (semi-poison)
9. Extraction of oil from seeds of any kind
10. Alcoholic liquors (wine)
11. Paribhasa (Definations)

Vol. 4

Chapters

1. Prayer to God
2. Symptoms of fever
3. Jwara’tisa’ra (fever with diarrhoae)
4. Irregularity of the digesting heat
5. Piles
6. Diseases affecting the belly