السيمياء الهندية .. الاسكندريه والسيمياء

Indian Alchemy.. Alexandria and Alchemy

Indian Alchemy

The Vedas (*) refer to the association of gold and longevity, and the idea of ​​transmuting base metals into gold appears in Buddhist writings from 100 to 400 AD - roughly at the same time as it appeared in Mediterranean writings.

The Indian practice of alchemy is confirmed in the 7th century AD in reports by Chinese travelers, and Indian alchemists with practical expertise (such as preparing strong mineral acids to transmute metals by melting them) were welcomed at the Chinese imperial court.

The Indian alchemists, like the Chinese, were more interested in making gold elixirs than in money, but they wanted to use the elixirs for medicine rather than immortality. Tantrism provided other paths to immortality. There is evidence that experts knew how to color metal and make "gold" but did not attach great importance to this expertise. Whether Indian alchemists adhered to noble principles remains uncertain, for there are no detailed records until the seventh century. Early Indian alchemy is frustratingly poor in its information about personalities, and as for the number of women who held positions of authority and fame, there were kingdoms headed by women. (*) The four sacred books of the Hindus.
Women served as accountants, judges, chamberlains, and guards. Some early Indian tribes were even named after women. Women fought in armies, not by chance, like Joan of Arc, but as part of the troops (22). It is equally possible that there were women alchemists, as there were in China and Alexandria, but this fact remains uncertain. Nagarjuna, meaning the name by which magic or spirits are practiced, is the only alchemist from whom we have obtained specific information.

Najjarjuna

The name Najjarjuna was used by at least two authors between 100 and 800 AD, so it is not clear exactly which Najjarjuna was the alchemist. A translation of a text from Sanskrit (ancient Indian literary language) into Chinese in 400 AD shows that the author was Nagarjuna, the Buddhist philosopher who founded Madhyamika dialectical logic and was associated with the beginning of Tantrism.

This particular person, Nagarjuna, is reported to have said:
A person can change bronze into gold by chemical medicines and incantations; by the skilled use of chemicals, silver can be transformed into gold and gold into silver; by spiritual power, an expert can transform even earthenware or stone into gold; and a certain volume of a liquid prepared from metals can change a thousand volumes of bronze into gold (23).

Despite the difficulty of dating events in early Indian history, these quotations confirm the practice of alchemy at least during this period. It is not only recent scholars who have had difficulties in dating.

The Chinese traveler Hsuan-chang writes in his writings in the seventh century: “Nagarjuna was so well versed in the techniques of pharmacy that by eating certain preparations He was able to extend his life and live for several hundred years, without his mind or body deteriorating (24).

The ambiguity of the Tantric writings can be added to the difficulties of dating. There is a story about a Tantric poet who recited a poem to a thousand people, but only one understood it.

Tantric texts can be read on several different levels.

Yogic (from yoga), ritual, sexual, and semiotic. For example, the same word is used for diamonds, lightning, the male organ, emptiness, and void, and it is difficult to distinguish between erotic fantasies and semiotic techniques.

Tantric Sufism also has its dark side, as in the Sufism of Alexandria and China. A Chinese traveler around 600 AD described ascetics who were attracted to the dead, ate carcasses, drank from skulls, and ate feces and filth. Sex was associated with sadism, and there were brutal rituals that included human sacrifice and mutilation. These professionals were, however, mostly extremists. In fact, they rejected the Indian social system in general, including the closed caste system. But they had their influence: in India, the art of alchemy continued to develop, but it deviated from a practical medical profession into a world of magical sexual perversions.

So we now have some new threads to follow: the alchemy of China and India. These two traditions of alchemy were independent of each other in many ways, but the cultures were connected through warfare, and had some semiotic elements in common. In the following chapters, we will see that exchanges increased worldwide, due to advances in travel, maps, trade, and the major integrating forces known as empires, not in the Alexandrian sense of the whirlwinds of conquest and subjugation, but through stable political systems that could control and administer the affairs of vast territories such as the Roman and Islamic empires.