all (almost) you ever wanted to know about indian alchemy

[Jan E.M. Houben]

As Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat clearly understood long ago in 1953,
indian studies and indology is much in need of  "répertoires décrivant le
vocabulaire propre à telle ou telle des grandes disciplines qui composent
l'indianisme classique" (avant-propos to Collection de vocabulaires
techniques du sanskrit in vol. 1: Vocabulaire du rituel védique). One of
these grand disciplines is indian alchemy for which now, finally, a
woerterbuch of technical terms is available.

Author: Oliver Hellwig.
Title: Woerterbuch der mittelalterlichen indischen Alchemie.
(eJIM supplements 2)
Eelde: Barkhuis, 2009.

Between 900 and 1500 C.E., the knowledge of Indian alchemy
was codified in a group of Sanskrit texts that deal with the
ideas and the methods of this scientific tradition. The dict-
ionary explains about 400 technical terms and names of sub-
stances that are mentioned in these texts. Apart from trans-
lations of central passages of the alchemical treatises the
dictionary offers an extensive collection of texts references,
which makes it posible to examine the intellec3tual cross-
links in the alchemical tradition in detail. The dictionary
is supplemented by indices of Sanskrit terms as well as of
text references and topics.

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eJIM - the eJournal of Indian Medicine - has just published eJIM Supplement
2:



Oliver Hellwig

Wörterbuch der mittelalterlichen indischen Alchemie



Please visit our website at www.indianmedicine.nl.



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