DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4651#0387
374 JOUltNAL OF A RESIDENCE
root was not to be found, and many lives had
been lost in searching for it. Niebuhr, I think,
mentions a similar opinion prevailing in Arabia,
where he met with some miserable adepts, who
described a plant that grows on the mountains of
Yemen, and tinges the teeth of animals feeding
on it yellow, as a species of the plant, the deside-
ratum of alchymists: and, I apprehend, the mo-
dern rage for alchymy amongst the Burmhans has
been introduced by the Mahomedans itinerant or
settled amongst them, who have also impressed
them, with a belief of the sovereign efficacy of
confections, of rubies, the precious metals, and
others, the farrago of nostrums which have so long
been a fruitful source of profit to the empirics of
the western world. I do not by this mean to
ascribe to the Arabians the invention of these
follies, but the renewal of them; as we have in-
dubitable proofs of their having been practised
in the east from the earliest periods of time, and
the Burmhans themselves boast of ancient books
amongst them which treat of the science of trans-
mutations. As a proof of this assertion, it may
be sufficient to quote the Shanscrit Ashlogue,
translated by Mr. Halhed in his preface to the
Code, or Digest, of Hindoo Laws:—
" Prom the insatiable desire of riches I have
digged beneath the earth, I have sought by che-
mistry to transmute the metals of the mountains.
root was not to be found, and many lives had
been lost in searching for it. Niebuhr, I think,
mentions a similar opinion prevailing in Arabia,
where he met with some miserable adepts, who
described a plant that grows on the mountains of
Yemen, and tinges the teeth of animals feeding
on it yellow, as a species of the plant, the deside-
ratum of alchymists: and, I apprehend, the mo-
dern rage for alchymy amongst the Burmhans has
been introduced by the Mahomedans itinerant or
settled amongst them, who have also impressed
them, with a belief of the sovereign efficacy of
confections, of rubies, the precious metals, and
others, the farrago of nostrums which have so long
been a fruitful source of profit to the empirics of
the western world. I do not by this mean to
ascribe to the Arabians the invention of these
follies, but the renewal of them; as we have in-
dubitable proofs of their having been practised
in the east from the earliest periods of time, and
the Burmhans themselves boast of ancient books
amongst them which treat of the science of trans-
mutations. As a proof of this assertion, it may
be sufficient to quote the Shanscrit Ashlogue,
translated by Mr. Halhed in his preface to the
Code, or Digest, of Hindoo Laws:—
" Prom the insatiable desire of riches I have
digged beneath the earth, I have sought by che-
mistry to transmute the metals of the mountains.