Uploaded August 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 seventh procedure, the 'fixing' (Sanskrit: niyamana) of mercury. The purpose of this procedure is to counteract mercury's characteristic of unsteadiness (capalatvam). The text states:
When it has thus properly regained its potency, the unsteady (mercury) will subsequently
be fixed through a steaming with betel, garlic, salt, false daisy, spiny gourd, and tamarind.
(Rasahṛdayatantra Chapter two, verse 10)
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 seventh procedure, the 'fixing' (Sanskrit: niyamana) of mercury. The purpose of this procedure is to counteract mercury's characteristic of unsteadiness (capalatvam). The text states:
When it has thus properly regained its potency, the unsteady (mercury) will subsequently
be fixed through a steaming with betel, garlic, salt, false daisy, spiny gourd, and tamarind.
(Rasahṛdayatantra Chapter two, verse 10)
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.
