[INDOLOGY] Question

[Matthew Kapstein]

Hello Dagmar,

Roy translates jārayet as "kills" at Rasārṇava XI.86. I'm certainly not an expert in this material
and so cannot weigh in on the appropriateness of Roy's interpretation.

best,
Matthew

Matthew T. Kapstein
Professor emeritus
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL Research University, Paris

Associate
The University of Chicago Divinity School

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On Friday, October 3rd, 2025 at 9:18 PM, Dagmar Wujastyk <d.wujastyk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Patrick,
> the word for "killing" (or calcination) is usually māraṇa, not jāraṇa. I have not come across sam-śam as a technical term for killing (or quenching) in alchemical literature, and, just looking it up in the Digital Corpus of Sanskrit, it does not seem to occur in the alchemical works listed there. It is also not featured in Hellwig's Dictionary of Alchemy (Woerterbuch der Mittelalterlichen Indischen Alchemie).
> I would understand it as cooling down in your context. Usually, the causative of nir-vāp is used for "quenching". Heating metals and then quenching them is normally done in alchemy to break down the metal so that it can then be powdered (and used in a medicine or elixir). I think what is referenced here is tempering, which is meant to reduce brittleness. It involves reheating the metal to a specific, controlled temperature below its critical temperature and then slowly cooling it. So heating the gold too much and then cooling it down too suddenly would have the effect of making it brittle: a desirable outcome in alchemy and medicine, an undesirable one in metallurgy. So, I think it's a metallurgical reference rather than an alchemical one.
> All the best,
> Dagmar
>
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2025 at 16:13, Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
>> Hi Patrick,
>>
>> You may wish to look at Roy’s History of Hindu Chemistry on the topic of « killing » gold and other metals, in rasaśāstra. The verb used is jārayed, but śam caus. can also mean to kill.
>>
>> Maybe there is more recent work on this as well.
>>
>> best,
>> Matthew
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 19:20, Patrick Olivelle via INDOLOGY <[indology at list.indology.info](mailto:On+Thu,+Oct+2,+2025+at+19:20,+Patrick+Olivelle+via+INDOLOGY+%3C%3Ca+href=)> wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry, Johnston translates: “makes it too soft.”
>>>
>>> Patrick
>>>
>>> Dear All:
>>>
>>> In Aśvaghoṣa’s Saundarananda, we have the following verse:
>>>
>>> dahet suvarṇaṁ hi dhamann akāle jale kṣipan saṁśamayed akāle /
>>> na cāpi samyak paripākam enaṁ nayed akāle samupekṣamāṇaḥ // 16.66 //
>>>
>>> The problem verb is saṃśamayet. Covill translates: "make it cool down”; and Johnston: “bring it to maturity.” My feeling is that the term has a technical meaning within the metallurgic tradition. Someone suggested “make it brittle”, which is tempting, but I do not know that the Sanskrit term has this meaning. Any help from those of you better versed in ancient Indian metallurgy would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> Patrick Olivelle
>>>
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