________________
Towards the end of the eighteenth century. A.D. the Jaina alchemists began to make use of initial letters of the names of elements and compounds, instead of the older. Symbolic names, e.g. 'ha' iti = hātakam (gold) raiti = rasa=pāro (mercury), “kha' iti = kharapura (mineral calmine), 'ma' itimanahsala = manashila (realgar), 'ta' iti Iltamkana (borax), “ha' iti=haratala (orpiment).
The prominent features of the Suvarna-Raupya - Siddhiśāstra on alchemy lay in the search after the elixir vitae and the powder of projection as its continents testify.18 The numerous methods for preparation of mercury," iron, copper. gold. silver and other things, although they would not secure importunity 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 supplant the old Indian Ayurvedic treatment by herbs and simples. Nay, even absurd pretensions were set up on behalf of these metallic preparations. Thus we come across some remarkable passages in the Jaina. MS. the Suvarna-Rauypa Siddhiśāastra amara Kāyā kare, etc.
The Suvarna-Rauypa-Siddhiśāstra is an important treatise of the latro-chemical period of India. It is comprehensive and purely a chemical work dealing with many operations of mercury,20 and various chemical processes are incidentally described, a good deal of which, however, overlaps which other as they are found in other Indian works on alchemy in the middle ages. The author of the Suvarna-Rauypa-Siddhi-Sastra, as devote Jaina monk, begins his work with an adoration of Gautame Ganess and Tirthankara Mahavira and even symbolizes Mahavira with mercury as Siva is symbolized with mercury in the Hindu alchemy.
- 170 -
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
