Who was nagarjuna?

Nagarjuna was a great indian scientist who was born in Gujarat in AD 931. He was a chemist, an alchemist, metallurgist and medicine man.

            As an alchemist, he knew the art of transmuting base metals to look like gold. The Arabs learnt the technique from him, and called it AI kimia. Medieval Europeans learnt about it from the Arabs, and called it alchemy.

Nagaruna’s most famous work is ‘Rasaratnakara,’ which deals with preparations of rasa- or mercury- compounds. In his treatise, he has discussed methods for the extraction of metals like gold, silver, tin, and copper.

            As the author of medical books like ‘Arogya manjari’ and ‘Yogasara’, he also made significant contributions to the field of curative medicine. Because of his profound scholarliness and versatile knownledge, he was appointed as chancellor of the famous University of Nalanda. He was one of the wizards of chemistry, and his discoveries continue to impress and astonish scientist even today.

CHARAKA SAMHITA

‘Charaka Samhita’ is the famous Ayurvedic treatise written by Charaka. It has remained a standard work on the subject for more than two thousand years, and has been trsnslated into many languages, including Latine and Arabic.