Uploaded June 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.
Some of the procedures require preliminary preparations to prepare devices and substances. The text of the Rasahrdayatantra is very concise, and tells us little about the devices used. We followed instructions from later alchemical texts to construct our devices, using clay. Since clay is a porous material, it needs to be sealed before being used for the procedures. For this, we used egg tempera. The film shows how to produce and apply it.
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.
Some of the procedures require preliminary preparations to prepare devices and substances. The text of the Rasahrdayatantra is very concise, and tells us little about the devices used. We followed instructions from later alchemical texts to construct our devices, using clay. Since clay is a porous material, it needs to be sealed before being used for the procedures. For this, we used egg tempera. The film shows how to produce and apply it.
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.
