Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/233

83 HINDU CHEMISTRY 83

VAIKRANTA Vaikranta has eight faces and six angles, is slippery and heavy and of uniform or mixed tint. It has 8 different colours, viz., white, red, yellow: blue, with the shades met with in the down of the pigeon, grass-green, black and variegated 55-56 Vaikrﬁnta is a powerful tonic and reckoned among the sovereign meslicines. It is a destroyer of all (bodily) disorders and is employed in the place of diamond. 57-58 Vaikranta is puriﬁed by being heated three days with the salts and the alkalies or by digestion with the acids, urines or a decoction of dolichos unfﬂorus and the plantain or of fzasfzalum scrobzl culatum. It is killed by being roasted in a cover- ed crucible eight times in combination with sulphur and lemon juice and fasp. scrobi. 67-68 Vaikranta, after being heated and plunged into the urine of the horse, ought to be repeatedly roasted and then reduced to ashes. 69 Vaikrzinta after incineration is substituted for diamond. 70 Macerated in the ashes of schrebera swiet. buteafrondosa and cow’s urine and mixed with the powdered root of euphorb. antiq., turmeric. ..