Rasa-Jala-Nidhi, vols. 2–5

means be separated from the swallowing mercury. Vide, pages 76 to 99, 105-116 and 134-135, vol. 1), is the only one that has been brought to the knowledge of the allopaths who have found it very efficacious as a general tonic. This medicine is now being prepared by some foreign chemists and used extensively by the Indian Allopaths. My publication will afford these and other chemists an opportunity of preparing many other metallic drugs, a lot of which are much more efficacious than Rasa-sinduram which is only one of the common-places of metallic preparations prescribed in books on Indian chemistry. This may open up a new avenue of commercial intercourse between India and the rest of the world leading to the revival of Indian Chemistry in foreign countries at least, if not in India itself. Let truth triumph, no matter how, when, and where.

Prof. Arthur Becket Lamb of the Harvard university has kindly suggested to me the desirability of pointing out the ancient sources of information on which my compilation is based. This is a point to which I had given a careful consideration at the time I put the work in hand. The difficulty which stands in the way of my accepting the suggestion is peculiar to the manner in which Indian Chemistry has been transmitted on the subject, hitherto discovered, claims originality: the author of every one of these books says that he is only a compiler, and there is nothing to disbelieve him, because all of these books have much in common with one another. It is manifestly evident that all of them drew on a common mass of materials transmitted by preceptors to disciples from