A review on Pariḅāṣā Prakaraṇa with special reference to Rasaśāstra textbooks

Abstract

Pariḅāṣā or terminologies are the structured set of concepts and their designations in specific subject fields. The words, cryptic and ambiguous, can be better understood with the support of Pariḅāṣā. Rasavāgḅata in 13th century advocated to read and understand the Pariḅāṣā rendered by Acarya Somadeva to avoid errors while carrying out mercurial preparations. Although it enlightens the meaning of words, it is difficult to find all the terms used in Rasaśāstra in an individual book. Therefore, this review was carried out to identify the technical terms mentioned in Pariḅāṣā Prakaraṇa of Rasaśāstra textbooks and chronological evolution of terms since ancient era. Rasaśāstra textbooks available in library, Gampaha Wickramarachchi Ayurveda Institute were taken for the study and the books without Pariḅāṣā Prakaraṇa were excluded. According to the results, there were twelve books which included Pariḅāṣā Prakaraṇa and they were related to Sangraha and Āḍunika Kāla of Rasaśāstra. A total of 172 terms are mentioned in those books. Percentage of 44 common words were above 50% and 25%-49% in 60 common words. Those terms can be categorized under actions, procedures, qualities and materials. Some books have used synonyms for several terms. Hence, it can be concluded that Rasaśāstra authors related to Āḍunika Kāla adopted Pariḅāṣā from the books related to Rasaśāstra Sangraha Kāla and most of the Pariḅāṣā terms are a combination of 4th and 9th chapters of Acarya Somadeva's Rasendrachudāmanī.