Regional variations

The oldest Indian writings, the Vedas (Hindu sacred scriptures), contain the same hints of alchemy that are found in evidence from ancient China, namely vague references to a connection between gold and long life. Mercury, which was so vital to alchemy everywhere, is first mentioned in the 4th- to 3rd-century-bc Artha-śāstra, about the same time it is encountered in China and in the West. Evidence of the idea of transmuting base metals to gold appears in 2nd- to 5th-century-ad Buddhist texts, about the same time as in the West. Since Alexander the Great had invaded India in 325 bc, leaving a Greek state (Gandhāra) that long endured, the possibility exists that the Indians acquired the idea from the Greeks, but it could have been the other way around.

It is also possible that the alchemy of medicine and immortality came to India from China, or vice versa; in any case, gold making appears to have been a minor concern, and medicine the major concern, of both cultures. But the elixir of immortality was of little importance in India (which had other avenues to immortality). The Indian elixirs were mineral remedies for specific diseases or, at the most, to promote long life.

As in China and the West, alchemy in India came to be associated with religious mysticism, but much later—not until the rise of Tantrism (an esoteric, occultic, meditative system), ad 1100–1300. To Tantrism are owed writings that are clearly alchemical (such as the 12th-century Rasārṇava, or “Treatise on Metallic Preparations”).

From the earliest records of Indian natural philosophy, which date from the 5th–3rd centuries bc, theories of nature were based on conceptions of material elements (fire, wind, water, earth, and space), vitalism (“animated atoms”), and dualisms of love and hate or action and reaction. The alchemist coloured metals and on occasion “made” gold, but he gave little importance to that. His six metals (gold, silver, tin, iron, lead, and copper), each further subdivided (five kinds of gold, etc.), were “killed” (i.e., corroded) but not “resurrected,” as was the custom of Western alchemy. Rather, they were killed to make medicines. Although “the secrets of mercurial lore” became part of the Tantric rite, mercury seems to have been much less important than in China. The Indians exploited metal reactions more widely, but, although they possessed from an early date not only vitriol and sal ammoniac but also saltpetre, they nevertheless failed to discover the mineral acids. This is the more remarkable because India was long the principal source of saltpetre, which occurs as an efflorescence on the soil, especially in populous tropical countries. But it lacks the high degree of corrosivity of metals possessed by the vitriols and chlorides and played a small part in early alchemy. Saltpetre appears particularly in 9th- to 11th-century-ad Indian and Chinese recipes for fireworks, one of which—a mixture of saltpetre, sulfur, and charcoal—is gunpowder. Saltpetre first appears in Europe in the 13th century, along with the modern formula for gunpowder and the recipe for nitric acid.

Hellenistic alchemy

Western alchemy may go back to the beginnings of the Hellenistic period (c. 300 bc–c. ad 300), although the earliest alchemist whom authorities have regarded as authentic is Zosimos of Panopolis (Egypt), who lived near the end of the period. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Byzantium (Constantinople) in the 7th or 8th century ad and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Synesius, the latest author represented, lived in Byzantium in the 4th century. The earliest is the author designated Democritus but identified by scholars with Bolos of Mende, a Hellenized Egyptian who lived in the Nile Delta about 200 bc. He is represented by a treatise called Physica et mystica (“Natural and Mystical Things”), a kind of recipe book for dyeing and colouring but principally for the making of gold and silver. The recipes are stated obscurely and are justified with references to the Greek theory of elements and to astrological theory. Most end with the phrase “One nature rejoices in another nature; one nature triumphs over another nature; one nature masters another nature,” which authorities variously trace to the Magi (Zoroastrian priests), Stoic pantheism (a Greek philosophy concerned with nature), or to the 4th-century-bc Greek philosopher Aristotle. It was the first of a number of such aphorisms over which alchemists were to speculate for many centuries.

In 1828 a group of ancient papyrus manuscripts written in Greek was purchased in Thebes (Egypt), and about a half-century later it was noticed that among them, divided between libraries in Leyden (the Netherlands) and Stockholm, was a tract very like the Physica et mystica. It differed, however, in that it lacked the former’s theoretical embellishments and stated in some recipes that only fraudulent imitation of gold and silver was intended. Scholars believe that this kind of work was the ancestor both of the Physica et mystica and of the ordinary artist’s recipe book. The techniques were ancient. Archaeology has revealed metal objects inlaid with colours obtained by grinding metals with sulfur, and Homer’s description (8th century bc) of the shield of Achilles gives the impression that the artist in his time was virtually able to paint in metal.

Democritus is praised by most of the other authors in the Venice–Paris manuscript, and he is much commented upon. But only Zosimos shows what had become of alchemy after Bolos of Mende. His theory is luxuriant in imagery, beginning with a discussion of “the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and binding the spirits within bodies” and continuing in the same vein. The “base” metals are to be “ennobled” (to gold) by killing and resurrecting them, but his practice is full of distillation and sublimation, and he is obsessed with “spirits.” Theory and practice are joined in the concept that success depends upon the production of a series of colours, usually black, white, yellow, and purple, and that the colours are to be obtained through Theion hydōr (divine or sulfur water—it could mean either).

Zosimos credits these innovations mainly to Maria (sometimes called “the Jewess”), who invented the apparatus, and to Agathodaimon, probably a pseudonym. Neither is represented (beyond Zosimos’ references) in the Venice–Paris manuscript, but a tract attributed to Agathodaimon, published in 1953, shows him to be preoccupied with the colour sequence and complicating it by using arsenic instead of sulfur. Thus, the colour-producing potentialities of chemistry were considerable by the time of Zosimos.

Zosimos also shows that alchemical theory came to focus on the idea that there exists a substance that can bring about the desired transformation instantly, magically, or, as a modern chemist might say, catalytically. He called it “the tincture,” and had several. It was also sometimes called “the powder” (xērion), which was to pass through Arabic into Latin as elixir and finally (signifying its inorganic nature) as the “philosopher’s stone,” “a stone which is not a stone,” as the alchemists were wont to say. It was sometimes called a medicine for the rectification of “base” or “sick” metals, and from this it was a short step to view it as a drug for the rectification of human maladies. Zosimos notes the possibility, in passing. When the objective of alchemy became human salvation, the material constitution of the elixir became less important than the incantations that accompanied its production. Synesius, the last author in the Venice–Paris manuscript, already defined alchemy as a mental operation, independent of the science of matter.

Thus, Greek alchemy came to resemble, in both theory and practice, that of China and India. But its objectives included gold making; thus it remained fundamentally different.