Chinese Alchemy

Abstract

IN the supplementary volume of his “Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Alchemie” (1931, p. 17), Prof. E. O. von Lippmann refers to my note on Chinese alchemy,¹ and since he appears to assume that in these matters silence gives consent (see his work, p. 40), it seems necessary to make some reply to his statements. He had adopted in the first volume of his book (1919, 449 ff.) the thesis of Berthelot that alchemy in China was transmitted through the Arabs, and this view, which is not held, so far as I am aware, by any competent authority at present, he maintains in the new volume. The sources of his information in both volumes are considerably removed from the originals, and for this reason he has probably not noticed that they are almost entirely based on the important paper by Edkins, which he refers to as ‘old’. He directs attention to a review by Laufer² of Johnson's “Study of Chinese Alchemy” (also largely based on Edkins's paper) as in some way representing ‘modern’ opinion on the matter. In this review Laufer makes no contribution to the subject, merely referring to Maspero's ‘critical work’ on China.³ Maspero, however, does not mention alchemy beyond a vague remark that it probably reached China from India in the third century A.D., a thesis which is not at all in agreement with Prof. Lippmann's. An Arabic origin of Chinese alchemy seems to me improbable on several grounds. In addition to those already given, I may refer to the statement of Al Nadim in the “Fihrist”,⁴ which shows that, even in the early period (A.D. X cent.) of the study of Arabic alchemy, an Indian or Chinese origin was considered possible. Another fact which seems to speak against an Arabic origin of Chinese alchemy is that its Study was almost entirely confined to Buddhist circles, both in India and China.