%D 2014 %T Materialgruppen in der indischen Alchemie %! Materialgruppen in der indischen Alchemie %X SummaryAlthough many areas of Sanskrit literature are characterized by a high level of abstraction, coherent theoretical discussions are widely missing in what may be called “natural sciences” from a modern Western perspective. This “lack of theory” is especially conspicuous in Indian material sciences such as the medieval alchemy. The paper discusses the question of how theoretical ideas about substance properties can be extracted from Sanskrit treatises using quantitative techniques. Results obtained using such methods are compared with scattered indigenous statements about the structure of substance classes. %U https://doi.org/10.13173/zeitdeutmorggese.164.2.0451 %0 Journal Article %R 10.13173/zeitdeutmorggese.164.2.0451 %J Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft %V 164 %N 2