Rasa-Jala-Nidhi, vols. 2–5

PREFACE

Little did I think at the time I set to myself the gigantic task of compiling, in 10 volumes, a book which has already been considered to be the most systematic and comprehensive treatise on the almost best, abstruse, and little known science of Hindu chemistry, that it would be received by the educated public with anything like enthusiasm. My diffidence in this direction was due, no doubt, to a strange but much evinced mentality, developed by a great majority of the present day Indians who are in the habit of condemning much of the social and cultural achievements of their forefathers without even taking the trouble of examining them critically, so much so that everything which is unknown and unintelligible to these people is denounced as dogmatic, unscientific, and superstitious. But fortunately for me, facts have belied my expectation, at least partially. The encouragement which I have been receiving from the really educated and patriotic section of the Indian public, irrespective of caste, creed, or community, has elicited in me a faint ray of hope that time may come when my countrymen will turn their eyes inwards and try to revive the ancient Indian culture, not only in the departments of language, philosophy, religion, mathematics, and social, socio-religious, and socio-political laws which have already received some mention, but also in the departments of material Sciences including the science of medicine, which, even in its degraded and much neglected condition, can claim an incomparable superiority to all other systems of medicine known to the world. It is indeed