Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/131

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

cxiii

tics and philosophy in the original. At a time when his patron, Sultan Mahmud of Ghzni, was busy pillaging the temples in Thaneswar, Mathura, Kanauj and Somnath with the zeal of an iconoclast, this philosophic Moslem was pondering over the Sámkhya and the Pátañjala, and instituting a comparison between their contents and those of the "Timæus" and its commentator, Proclus.

We have elsewhere quoted at length Albérúní's views on Rasáyana (alchemy); it now remains for us to glean such information from him as will throw light on the subject under inquiry. According to Sachau, the learned translator of Albérúní, "some of the books that had been translated under the first Abbaside Caliphs were extant in the library of Albérúní, when he wrote his India, the Brahmasiddhánta or Sindhind………the Charaka in the edition of Ali Ibn Zain and the Pañchtantra or Kalila and Dimna." The fact that the Charaka occupied a place in the library of a cultured Arab affords an additional proof of the esteem in which the Hindu system of