A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CHEMISTRY. 41 



of the Chinese word. If it can be shown to consist of Chinese roots, the word 

 Nuskadur is probably of Chinese origin ; if not, the Persian etymology may be accepted. 



As regards the second portion of the name, Porter Smith in the preface to his Materia 

 Medica and Natural History of China states that the character ?3^ , Ska, is connected 



with, and yet differentiated from, the character for « Stone ' ^ Shih, This has been kindly 

 verified for me from Chinese dictionaries by Mr. K. Ohmiya, a Japanese gentleman now 

 resident in Calcutta, though he is unable to agree with Dr. Porter Smith's extension of 

 the meaning into an expression of the appearance and condition of a more or less per- 

 fectly crystallised salt. Mr. Ohmiya has also been good enough to ascertain from the 

 same source of information that the character Nau, consists of W\ to which the 



meaning ' natural salt ' is given ; together with "^ the determinative for ' Stone.' 

 The syllables nau-sha appear, therefore, to be capable of complete analysis into Chinese 

 roots. 



We are accordingly led to the conclusion that the word Nuskadur is probably the 

 Chinese nau-sha, suffixed by the Persian word ddru. The Sanskrit navasdr would also 

 seem to be simply the Chinese name in a slightly altered form. 



No final opinion on the subject can be given without a careful study of the writings 

 of the Chinese school of alchemists that flourished between 200 B.C. and 400 A.D., but 

 this, unfortunately, is out of the question in India. 1 It may, however, be added that the 

 author of the Filirist (written at Baghdad in 988) mentions China amongst the countries 

 for which the honour of being the birth-place of Alchemy was then claimed ; " while if it 

 is found on investigation that the Chinese alchemists employed hair and sal-ammoniac in 

 their operations, there is no difficulty in accounting for the subsequent dissemination of 

 their knowledge, since the first Arab embassy visited the Court of China in 651 A.D., 3 

 i.e. 100 years before the time of Jabir. India too was in constant communication with 

 China from 66 A.D. 



I desire to express my great indebtedness to Maulawi Hidayat Husain, of the 

 Calcutta Madrasah, for his willing help during the preparation of this paper. I have also 

 to thank Dr. N. Annandale, Deputy Superintendent of the Indian Museum, ( at whose 

 request the paper was begun), for the valuable criticisms and suggestions that have so 

 greatly eased my labour in a somewhat unfamiliar field. 



1 Even Edkin's paper (Trans, of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society — Hong Kong — Part 5, 1855, Art. IV) is not 

 available in Calcutta. I have chiefly drawn my information regarding this Chinese School from Hanbury's account of Edkin's 

 paper, in his Notes on Chinese Materia Medica (Pharm. Journ., II, 1860-1861, p. 115), as well as from various references in 

 Bretschneider's Botanicon Sinicum. The chief alchemist of the school was Ko-Hung, who died in 330 A.D. 



* Ed. cit., p. 259. 



» Bretschneider (On the Knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese of the Arabs and Arabian Colonies, Trubner,l87i, p. 8, 

 quoting from the Annals of the T'ang Dynasty. 



Mem. A.S.B. 22*10=05. 



