Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/100

 evidence is of great use to us in deciding the age of the Tantras, dealing with mercury.

Contemporary collateral records by foreign writers go to corroborate the date of the alchemical Tantras tentatively fixed by us, as the name and fame of mercurial remedies as used by the Hindu yogis had spread far and wide. The following two extracts will suffice:

"There is another class of people called Chughi (yogi), who were indeed properly Abraiman but they form a religious order devoted to the idols. They are extremely long-lived, every one of them living to 150 or 200 years. They eat very little * * * and these people make use of a strange beverage, for they make a potion of sulphur and quicksilver mixed together, and this they drink twice every month. This, they say, gives them long life; it is a potion they are used to take from their childhood."—Yule's "Macro Polo," Vol. II. p. 300.

"Arghun, der alchymie und den geheimen Wissenschaften ergeben hatte indisehe Bachschi, d. h. Schreiber, gefragt, durch welche Mittel sie