Uploaded May 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Indian alchemy - Rasashastra - is the craft of making elixirs from mercury. From the tenth century, Indian alchemists started composing treatises about their work. The earliest of these treatises was the 'Heart of Mercury' (Rasahṛdayatantra). It describes eighteen procedures for making mercurial elixirs.
We reconstructed these procedures. This film shows the first procedure, the steaming (Sanskrit: svedana) of mercury. The purpose of this procedure is to remove contaminants from mercury.
The text states:
"The steaming of mercury is carried out with a sixteenth each of mustard greens, salt, the three pungent substances, leadwort, fresh ginger and radish together with sour gruel for three days over a mild fire."
(Rasahḍayatantra, chapter 2, verse 3)
The text gives limited information on each procedure, so that a reconstruction necessarily involves using other sources as well. Some uncertainty, however, remains.
Here, for example, we used roquette to substitute for mustard greens. However, the text only states that "mustard" (āsuri) should be used, and that could be mustard seeds instead of greens. Such ambiguities highlight that the text was probably not meant as a manual, but rather as a general description of the craft.
The following procedures were executed by a trained professional and should not be attempted without expert supervision.
A collaboration of AyurYog (ayuryog.org) and neterapublishing (neterapublishing.com).
This project was made possible through funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation program under grant agreement No.639363.
Indian alchemy - Rasashastra - is the craft of making elixirs from mercury. From the tenth century, Indian alchemists started composing treatises about their work. The earliest of these treatises was the 'Heart of Mercury' (Rasahṛdayatantra). It describes eighteen procedures for making mercurial elixirs.
We reconstructed these procedures. This film shows the first procedure, the steaming (Sanskrit: svedana) of mercury. The purpose of this procedure is to remove contaminants from mercury.
The text states:
"The steaming of mercury is carried out with a sixteenth each of mustard greens, salt, the three pungent substances, leadwort, fresh ginger and radish together with sour gruel for three days over a mild fire."
(Rasahḍayatantra, chapter 2, verse 3)
The text gives limited information on each procedure, so that a reconstruction necessarily involves using other sources as well. Some uncertainty, however, remains.
Here, for example, we used roquette to substitute for mustard greens. However, the text only states that "mustard" (āsuri) should be used, and that could be mustard seeds instead of greens. Such ambiguities highlight that the text was probably not meant as a manual, but rather as a general description of the craft.
The following procedures were executed by a trained professional and should not be attempted without expert supervision.
A collaboration of AyurYog (ayuryog.org) and neterapublishing (neterapublishing.com).
This project was made possible through funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation program under grant agreement No.639363.
