1. Introduction to Chinese alchemy

Studies in Chinese alchemy are rendered comparatively easier, as in the case of all other historical studies, by the Chinese written tradition, massive documentation and love for chronology. As printing was invented in China in the eighth/ninth century AD, i.e., some four to five centuries before it became known in the West, almost all the written documents are in a printed form. Abundant material is available on alchemy, chiefly written in the medieval period. It is to be found in the Taoist patrology Daozang, the pharmaceutical natural - 1 histories, dynastic records and encyclopaedias and compendia written a little later. It helps in tracing the origin of various alchemical ideas such as "the herb of immortality", gold-making or aurifaction, the powder of projection (i.e., the powder, a pinch of which transforms a large amount of base-metal into a noble one) or the use of mercury in synthesizing the elixirs. 1 /w. HEX 45

46 Since vast literature is available in the form of primary sources, Chinese alchemy has been extensively studied by a number of scholars, in its various aspects. In his monumental work Needham, with collaboration of Ho Peng-yoke, Lu Gwei-Djen, Sivin and others, deals with the problems of the origin of alchemy in China, its development through the centuries between the fifth century B.C. to the seventeenth century AD (i.e., until the introduction of modern chemical ideas in China from the West); the philosophy behind it; its metallurgical and physiological backgrounds and the chemical technology used in these experimentations. Needham gives translated excerpts from the ancient and medieval chemical and alchemical texts under consideration and uses them to draw inferences regarding these practices. Sivin, in his "Chinese Alchemy Preliminary Studies", gives an account of Chinese alchemy, the sources for its study, priorities in the study of Chinese alchemy and further discusses the text "Dan-jin Yao-jue"² written 3 by Sun Si-miao, a seventh century physician. Sivin has 2 dan jing yao jue 3 sun si er

47 supplied the future scholars with a model format for studying alchemical or, for that matter, any protoscientific text of the past. A few translations of the Taoist alchemical texts, including some from Dao Zang have been published by authors like Wu, Ware, Tenney, Zhao Yun-zong, etc. Among the books which are available for study we will be discussing a few at length here. These are the ones which depict the main trends in the growth of Chinese alchemy and also reflect upon the areas of the influence of Indian and Chinese alchemy upon each other. It should be noted that this is by no means an exhaustive study of Chinese alchemy. We do not study a number of aspects such as its basis in the synthesis of Taoist, Buddhist and Tantrik philosophy, nature of physiological alchemy, i.e., preservation of body by chemical means even after death, nei dan or internal alchemy, influence of Chinese alchemy on Arabian and Japanese alchemy and We will limit our discussion to those aspects which reveal the parallel development of alchemy in India and China and the transmission of chemical and alchemical vice versa. ideas between them.