Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/106

 on these literary forgerers; rather we ought to give them credit for their utter self-effacement. We often forget that the spirit of the times in which they wrote was dead against them—reluctant to accept revolutionary ideas or discoveries; hence the temptation to fasten them on old and recognised authorities.

Although no direct historical evidence is available, we are not left entirely in the dark. Our author, at the very outset, names twenty seven alchemists from whose writings he derives his materials (p. 77 ), and later on, in the section on apparatus (p. 130), he quotes Rasárnava as a source of his information. Opium was not employed in medicine in his time nor is there any mention of Phiraṅgaroga, (lit. the disease of the Portuguese), which was introduced into India about the middle of the 16th century, and the treatment of which by means of calomel and chob-chini