This book has grown out of a UGC Major Project on Pharmacy in the Sanskrit Treatises on Rasayana in Eastern India awarded to the Editors in 2005. Rasayana, a sub-discipline of Ayurveda, gradually got transformed into Alchemy, the protoscience preceding Chemistry.
In this monograph, an obscure text, the Suvarnatantra of the 16th century has been deciphered. The original Sanskrit text, its translation and interpretations by the research team have been incorporated. The introductory essay deals with the whole history of Rasayana in ancient India and the epilogue gives the colonial consequences of the mutation of Ayurveda.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chittabrata Palit
Dr. Chittabrata Palit, M.A. (Cal), PhD (Cantab), FRAS (Londan) is a senior professor of history at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. He is an established authority on the subject. He has served as a member of the National Commission for the History of science(1987-2001), principal investigator of a project on Science and nationalism for the Indian National science Academy for the last six years and currently he principal investigator of a UGC major project on Pharmacy in the Ayurvedic Texts in eastern India. He has numerous books on the history of sciences including medicine to his credit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nupur Dasgupta
Nupur Dasgupta teaches history in the History Department, Jadavpur University. She has specialised in the early history of India. The area of her interest covers the social history of science and technology, gender issues, and folk culture in early India. She has published papers on her chosen field of research and is currently engaged in further work on the above subjects.
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