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tion as its contents testify.17 The numerous methods for preparation of mercury,18 iron,19, copper,20 gold, 21 silver,22 and other things, although they could not secure immortality or revive the dead, were meant to be helpful accessories and tentatively, mixed up with the medical recipes, which were drawn, chiefly from the vegetable kingdom, but they soon began to assert a supremacy of their own so as even to upplant the old Indian Ayurvedic treatment by herbs and simples.23 Nay, even absurd pretensions were set up on behalf of these metallic preparations.24 Thus we come across some remarkable passages in the Jaina MS. the Suvarna-Raupya Siddhi-Sastra 'amara kāyā kare,'25 etc.
The one characteristic feature of the extant Jaina MS, the SuvarnaRaupya-Siddhi-Sāstra and others of the latro-chemical period is that opium (aphina)26 is recognised as an official drug in their materia medica from the 12th century A.D. upto the middle of the eighteenth century A.D. even up to the present day as it is also mentioned as such in other Indian works27 on Rasāyana.
Whatever has been revealed by an analysis of the materials in the Suvarna-Raupya-Siddhi-Sastra under the preparations mercury, all that
17 pache te purane agni dije...
ghisyu khai to kaya amara kare-SRSS, ch.IX. 1. paisa bhar suddha gorakh mardi... saviroga jai dviguni khudha hove-Ibid. bhiko athava te khaciko curna kije... amara kaya kare
---Ibid. ch. IX. 2. 18 See Paradavidhi
paro hingoru korine mahe mehlie upari dhaknu dije.... te paro bandhaye puviko thae, uttama nagavanga che 1. mukhamadhye rakhie to bala ghano kare
--Ibid., ch. 12, 18x, 22, 44. 19 Ibid., ch. IX. 11; ch. X. 16. 20 Ibid., ch. II. 1. ; ch. IIL. 66x. 21 Ibid., ch. II. 2,4,5,8,14 ; III. 2,3,4,7,9,19,20,33,36,37. 22 Ibid., ch. III. 14, 18, 23, 30, 31, 32. 23 Ibid., ch. V. 32, 37, 38; ch. IX. 5, 6; ch. X. 14. 24 Ibid., ch. IX. 24. 95 Ibid., ch. IX. 2. 26 Ibid., ch. III. 30-31 (aphina); ch. VI. 7 (aphina); ch. V. 26. (aphina). 27 See Rasaratna Samuccaya of Vagbhat.
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