Essay name: Alchemy in India and China
Author:
Vijaya Jayant Deshpande
Affiliation: Panjab University / Department of Chemistry
The thesis "Alchemy in India and China" explores the comparative aspects of alchemy in these two countries, focusing on chemical and protochemical formulations while addressing why modern science developed in the West rather than in India or China. It briefly touches upon internal alchemy in China and the ritualistic tantra in India.
Chapter 6 - Transmission of Alchemical and Chemical ideas (Part 2)
41 (of 48)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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for calamine or copper sulphate is also the probable
origin of Persian words "Tutia" for calamine and tutty
for copper sulphate.
In this way the etymology of the word "tutenag"
for zinc (or Tutamu in Chinese), as it was known to the
Europeans in the seventeenth century, is found in the
word "Tutthanag".
It is probable that zinc was introduced to China
from India in the late medieval period along with its
name "tutthanag" or tutenag. Later, zinc and its alloys
were exported to Europe from China under the same name,
after the Chinese learned the method of extraction of zinc
from calamine from the Indians, who had the knowledge of
it for more than four or five previous centuries since
Indians knew this method from N膩g膩rjuna's time.
Case of "Crow's Beak Gold"
It
We have come across, in the chapter on Chinese
Alchemy, an alchemist-metallurgist Wang Jie of the Song
dynasty (960-1126 AD) who could make gold from iron.
was an intriguing fact for modern chemists as to how gold
could be made from iron. More so because iron does not
form a stable amalgam with mercury. Wang Jie's gold was
