In South Asia, alchemy is inseparable from its religious contexts. Apart from Islamic alchemy, largely imported from Persia, nearly all of the documented alchemical traditions of the Indian subcontinent have been Hindu. The sole extant indigenous non-Hindu works containing significant alchemical data are the Buddhist Kālacakra Tantra with its eleventh-century CE Vimalaprabhā commentary, and an eleventh- or twelfth-century CE Jain text, the Rasaratnasamucchaya of Māṇikyadeva Sūri. Therefore, the focus of the present article will be Hindu alchemy.

A number of scientific subfields and disciplines, linked with a body of religious practices and techniques, comprise Hindu alchemy. These include metallurgy, traditional Indian medicine in its northern (āyurveda) and southern (siddhacikitsā) forms, iatrochemisty (rasa śāstra, the "science of essential substances"), rejuvenation therapy (rasāyana, the "path of essential substances"), sexual rehabilitation therapy (vājīkaraṇa), transmutational alchemy (dhātuvāda, the "doctrine of the...