パイグニア : 魔術と化学マジック

The word Paignia (sg. Paignion) means “toy”, “game”, “comic performance”, “light poem”, and so on. This word was used as a genre of the ancient Geek literature. And it was also used in Papyri Graecae Magicae (=PGM). In recent years, Jacco Dieleman categorized all the texts of PGM according to the contents into five groups; (1) knowledge, (2) control over others, (3) protection, (4) healing, (5) miscellaneous. He assigned Paignia only into the fifth group and commented that it was best to be translated as “jocular recipes”, which were fragments of frivolous and naughty tricks”.
It is true that Paignia were kind of entertainments performed in symposium unlike most of other magical recipes, which were full of mysterious atmosphere. But the fact that PGM includes Paignia, even if it contains only two examples, suggests that the both kinds of texts had common features. It is needless to say that it is best to start to study from typical texts in order to understand the nature of PGM, but here l dare to start from exceptions because they might expose the essence.
Chemical examinations, which have not ever tried, would reveal that some Paignia were based on chemical, botanical, and mineral reasons, they were not necessarily “jocular”. The purpose of this paper is to try to redefine the nature of Paignia as “chemical magic” and to obtain a new viewpoint on PGM.