DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Siddhas. Who were they? What did they practice and teach? --I

**Knillagrarp** · 03-04-2011, 04:52 PM

....The system of medicine Siddha Vaidya used metals like Gold,lead etc. Gold was considered the most noble of elements. It was used in preparations of medicines to prolong life. Siddhars used transmutation because that was the only way they could obtain these metals.

Why is gold precious and not lead or mercury? There is a scientific reason for this and Sanat Kumar explains why here.

To summarize Kumar's reasoning, for an element to be valuable, it must be chemically stable (everything that is combustible is out), it must be solid (all the gases are out). It cannot be easily combustible, or corrosive, or radioactive, i.e. deadly.

So, for an element to be precious, it has to be not a gas, doesn’t corrode or burst into flames, and doesn’t kill you, and be rare as well.

Kumar points out that, all this leaves us with just five elements: rhodium, palladium, silver, platinum and gold, and all of them, as it happens, are considered precious metals.

We can further whittle this list, Silver tarnishes easily, rodium or palladium were not discovered until the modern time. That leaves only platinum and gold. For an ancient Gold smith, platinum, with much higher melting temperature relative to gold, would have been much harder to work with.

So, it was no accident that gold became a kind of lingua franca of commerce.

There is no scientific evidence to show that gold has any kind of life extending properties whatsoever. Siddhars may have believed as such, but such thinking is nothing but pure superstition.

If siddhars were obsessed with converting mercury to gold, the motivation must be nothing more esoteric than that of the alchemists of Europe. Also, if Siddhars are supposed to be interested in spiritual life and all that jazz, why were they interested in extending mere material life in the first place anyway?

What Siddhars believed can be anything that we want to imagine, but they cannot be anything definitively beyond what can be observed and verified. Anything beyond that is nothing deserving of more respect than mere surreptitious faith.

Cheers!

03-04-2011, 04:52 PM	#25
Knillagrarp Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 538 Senior Member	....The system of medicine Siddha Vaidya used metals like Gold,lead etc. Gold was considered the most noble of elements. It was used in preparations of medicines to prolong life. Siddhars used transmutation because that was the only way they could obtain these metals. Why is gold precious and not lead or mercury? There is a scientific reason for this and Sanat Kumar explains why here. To summarize Kumar's reasoning, for an element to be valuable, it must be chemically stable (everything that is combustible is out), it must be solid (all the gases are out). It cannot be easily combustible, or corrosive, or radioactive, i.e. deadly. So, for an element to be precious, it has to be not a gas, doesn’t corrode or burst into flames, and doesn’t kill you, and be rare as well. Kumar points out that, all this leaves us with just five elements: rhodium, palladium, silver, platinum and gold, and all of them, as it happens, are considered precious metals. We can further whittle this list, Silver tarnishes easily, rodium or palladium were not discovered until the modern time. That leaves only platinum and gold. For an ancient Gold smith, platinum, with much higher melting temperature relative to gold, would have been much harder to work with. So, it was no accident that gold became a kind of lingua franca of commerce. There is no scientific evidence to show that gold has any kind of life extending properties whatsoever. Siddhars may have believed as such, but such thinking is nothing but pure superstition. If siddhars were obsessed with converting mercury to gold, the motivation must be nothing more esoteric than that of the alchemists of Europe. Also, if Siddhars are supposed to be interested in spiritual life and all that jazz, why were they interested in extending mere material life in the first place anyway? What Siddhars believed can be anything that we want to imagine, but they cannot be anything definitively beyond what can be observed and verified. Anything beyond that is nothing deserving of more respect than mere surreptitious faith. Cheers!
	Quote