Premodern Indian alchemical treatises typically deal with the manufacture of mercurial elixirs for increasing health and vitality or for attaining a state of transcendent immortality. Some of the works also describe the making of artificial gems, gold, and silver, transferring the Indian alchemical tradition’s focus on mercury to other materials, while also shifting its goals from spiritual to mundane ones.

This exhibit shows the manufacture of artificial coral as described in a sixteenth-century Sanskrit alchemical treatise, the Rasaprakāśasudhākara (The Nectar Mine Light on Mercury). The exhibited film is part of a larger project called “Reconstructing Indian alchemy”, dedicated to furthering our understanding of the Indian alchemical tradition in terms of both its textual transmission and its material culture.

The deceptively simple recipe for artificial coral involves many hours of meticulous and physically demanding work that requires detailed methodological knowledge and access to partly non-native materials that may have been expensive and difficult to procure. Recreating the recipe highlights the sparsity of its specifications and brings up a series of questions on the means of Indian alchemists and their access to raw substances; the financial viability of the production of artificial coral and other precious substances; and the intended use of the final products. How would alchemists benefit from making these products; and how were such alchemical products used? And who were the alchemical works written for?

The series “Reconstructing Indian alchemy” can be found on www.ayuryog.org