HINDU CHEMISTRY
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the chief ingredient is light, which is rendered solid by mixture with some particles of earth. Were it mere earth, it might be calclined by fire strongly urged. Its light is not latent, but overpowered by the colour of the earthy particles mixed with it. In the Mīmāmsā, however, it is reckoned as a distinct substance, as before observed."[1]
After giving an account of air and ether etc., Colebrooke proceeds with Kanāda's
- ↑ The term "element" was not generally used in the modern sense of a component of a compound; rather it connoted certain properties characteristic of matter, e.g., coldness, dryness, heaviness, fluidity etc., thus it referred to certain qualities in the abstract. The Greek philosophers also held similar, if not identical, views. Cf. "Empedokles und die moderne Chemie." pp. 185-86 of "Griechische Denker" by Gomperz vol. 1, ed. 1903. The following extract will also throw much light on the subject:
"The four so-called "elements"—air, water, earth and fire—were regarded by that intellectually great philosopher, Empedocles of Agrigent (about 440 B.C.), as the basis of the world; but neither he himself nor Aristotle, who adopted these into his system of natural philosophy, looked upon them as different properties carried about by one original matter. Their chief qualities (the primæ qualitates of the later scbolastics) he held to be those apparent to the touch, viz., warm, cold, dry, and moist. Each of the four so-called elements is characterised by the possession of two of these properties, air being warm and moist,
