Standardization of Abhraka Shodhana - A Pharmaceutical Study

Pankaj Rai¹, Neeraj Kumar¹, R. S. Singh², Richa Pathak¹ and L. N. Gupta¹


¹Department of Rasa Shastra, Faculty of Ayurveda, Institute of Medical Sciences.

²Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi - 221 005 India.

Abstract:

The use of metals and minerals for therapeutic purpose are very common in Ayurvedic system of medicine. Shodhana is the initial step with objective to remove impurities and detoxify the material and so make them suitable for further processing. Nirvapa is very important step of shodhana process for the metal having high melting point in which the material is heated to red hot stage and then quenched into a liquid medium such as cow milk, decoction of triphala, etc. In the present study, shodhana of abhraka (biotite) was done using standard procedure. Raw abhraka was divided into 3 batches and the pharmaceutical study of shodhana process was done. It was found that abhraka attained red hot stage at around 8230C after 55 minutes of heating. Approximately 6 hour is required for seven time nirvapa of abhraka. Solid content and alkalinity of the cow - milk was increased after shodhana process.

Keywords: Abhraka; Shodhana; Nirvapa; cow milk

[ HTML Full Text]

Back to TOC