14-12-03 22:11, S.Kalyanaraman wrote:
> rasa_yana also means 'alchemist', 'mercury'. Hundreds of
> metallurgical texts use the rasa. Another synonym for mercury is:
> pa_darasa.
I don't understand your metallurgical fixation and exclusive
concentration on secondary, figurative meanings, which makes you delude
yourself with a rigmarole of fantasies, while the facts are rather
simple. Mercury is a liquid at room temerature, which is the true reason
why the words <soma-> and <rasa-> (whose etymological meaning is very
well established) appear frequently in connection with it. European
alchemists called mercury <hydrargyrum> (literally 'water-silver', i.e.
liquid silver), but it doesn't follow that <hydro-> is a metallurgigal
term. It's also only natural for molten metals to be described as
liquids -- they _are_ liquids. If the same Sanskrit word means 'juice'
in most other contexts (to say nothing of some even juicier meanings),
that's a poor reason for insisting that all juices are metals.
Piotr