The Compendium of Kāśyapa 8.4

Now we shall explain the chapter entitled 'Instruction on Soups' (Yūṣanirdeśa).

Thus spoke the venerable Kaśyapa.

Food endowed with sauces such as soups becomes more wholesome / and particularly productive of health for the healthy and the sick.

And hence food is the cause of existence for all living beings; / there is indeed no maintenance of the vital breath for living creatures without food.

And no medicament is found equal to food; / a man can be rendered free from disease by food alone.

Even if provided with medicine, one without food cannot survive; / therefore food is declared by physicians to be the great medicament.

By similarity of intake, it is seen as single by the wise; / twofold by distinction of potency; threefold by distinction of humours;

likewise it is spoken of as fourfold by distinction of chewable, drinkable, and so forth; / and again considered fivefold from consisting of the five elements.

It is further taught as sixfold, based on the six tastes,
and again divided into twelvefold, based on the twelve modes of administration,

and twenty-fourfold further, through the permutations of time and the like.
Depending on it, the group of four [goals], beginning with virtue and wealth, proceeds;

the maintenance of health and medical treatment likewise depend on it alone.
Contentment, nourishment, firmness, intellect, enthusiasm, virility, strength,

melodiousness of voice, vital essence, bodily luster, life, brilliance, radiance—
such qualities of men arise solely from food.

Therefore, a self-controlled person should eat wholesome and measured [food] at the proper time, containing the six tastes.
How and what should be eaten, and what the qualities and faults of eatables are—

all that I shall declare to you hereafter in the chapter on the classification of eatables.
Here, I shall fully explain to you [soups] prepared with various substances,

which pacify diverse diseases, O Sthavirajīvaka.
[Soup] stimulates appetite, kindles the digestive fire, is aphrodisiac, enhances voice, complexion, strength, and digestive fire;

it produces perspiration, is foremost, brings contentment, nourishment, and ease.
Soup, by virtue of its unctuous and warm nature, [pacifies] vāta; by its unctuousness and astringency,

it restrains pitta; and kapha on account of being lukewarm and through processing.
The wise state the verbal root yūṣ in the sense of liquefying and cooking.

Cooked, it liquefies foodstuffs; hence it is [called] a good soup (sadyūṣa).
[Made] with diverse ingredients and other substances without dehusked rice,

it is called a soup when prepared; with dehusked rice, it is a gruel.
Mung bean soup, virasikā soup, and pomegranate soup;

and two soups of leadwort and myrobalan are proclaimed;
two pañcakola soups, bowel-binding and kindling the digestive fire;

cereal soup, then horsegram soup, and fruit soup, O Bhārgava;
flower soup, leaf soup, and bark soup likewise;

the foremost sprout soup, and also the great soup;
rāsnā soup, the great soup, and that of yellow wood sorrel and radish;

of spreading hogweed and Indian mallow; likewise the jaggery-kāmbalika;
and the foremost trikaṭu soup, and with garlic and white goosefoot;

these twenty-five soups were formulated by Kaśyapa.
Soups are astringent-sweet and astringent-sour, O Bhārgava;

all are prescribed in two varieties, and all have a liquid source.
Seasoned, unseasoned, and partially seasoned, in diseases characterized by pitta, kapha, and vāta,

and through the application of unctuous substances, these soups are considered threefold.
They alone are declared digestive, emaciating, and nourishing,

owing to their cool, hot, or mixed potency and their reliance on diverse substances.
Formulations of salt, the three pungents, unctuous substances, cooking, and processing,

are established among soups; to the wise, I shall not state them again and again.
According to the classification of humours, those soups are counted as seventy-five;

likewise, as fifty based on tastes, through maintenance and the like.
Some soups—and for some, whatever liquid condiment [there is]—

prepared on fire; but uncooked are rāga, khāḍava, and beverages.
Those soups prepared with twin unctuous substances of clarified butter and oil

are commended in vāta diseases, in dry feces, consumption, and trauma;
for those with intense digestive fire, sleepless, worn out by carrying loads, walking, fatigue, and sexual intercourse,

exhausted by falls and the like, this single soup is desired.
Curd, sour gruel, vinegar, and whichever group kindles the digestive fire:

the decoction of all soups is apart from that belonging to the fivefold procedures.
Kvātha, niryūha, ādāna, and kaṣāya: these are equivalent;

garbha, kalka, and āvāpa [are equivalent]; cooking is called processing.
Of dehusked, aged mung beans with water that kindles the digestive fire,

mudgamaṇḍa is thin; when slightly thick, it is mung bean soup.
A soup prepared with mung beans and sour buttermilk is known as virasikā.

That very one, made with pomegranate and buttermilk, is called appetizing.
Prepared with mung beans and pomegranate, it is considered pomegranate soup.

A decoction of mung beans and myrobalan is called dhātrī soup.
These five soups are prescribed for the fivefold procedures.

I shall explain other elective soups according to the manifestation of disease.
Cooked in a decoction of leadwort, along with its root, stem, and leaves,

leadwort soup is celebrated as destroying disorders of the assimilation tract and colic,
slaying spleen disorders, piles, phantom tumours, and obstinate skin diseases, overcoming heart disease, kapha, and vāta.

Radish soup is similar; it indeed requires processing.
Zedoary, crab's claw, bael, hogweed, Costus, Woodfordia,

wood apple, pomegranate fruit, yellow wood sorrel, and sensitive plant;
this pañcakola soup is considered an excellent bowel-binder.

Endowed with kindlers of digestive fire and with salts, that very one kindles the digestive fire.
Of all unbroken grains in equal parts,

there should be a decoction, excluding black gram, sesame, lablab bean, and mustard.
Cereal soup, prepared with long pepper and pomegranate, is considered foremost;

or cooked in curd-scum or buttermilk, according to the manifestation of disease.
In diseases of the head and earache, in heart disease, and in hemicrania,

in loss of appetite and in diarrhoea, it should be prepared with sesame and black gram.
A decoction of horsegram is called horsegram soup;

producing dryness, it destroys diseases caused by concurrent vitiation, vāta, and kapha.
Made with wood apple, bael, jujube, grapes, pomegranate, and mango:

fruit soup made from unripened fruits destroys chronic diarrhoea.
Sunn hemp, red silk-cotton, and Woodfordia, along with lotus and fragrant water lily;

from purple bauhinia and variegated bauhinia, one should prepare a soup with flowers.
In menorrhagia, internal hemorrhage, and in burning sensations of the abdomen and eyes,

flower soup, prepared without oil and sour ingredients, with pomegranate, [is wholesome].
With water boiled with leaves of bael, horse-radish tree, castor, Indian mallow, rāsnā, and mango,

there would be a soup from a decoction of leaves; leaf soup removes vāta.
Having boiled down the bark of pomegranate, hog plum, jambu, and Indian beech

with curd-scum, bark soup removes diarrhoea.
With leaves of banyan, cluster fig, sacred fig, wavy-leaved fig, black fig, and flame of the forest,

and of lotuses, seasoned with clarified butter and pomegranate,
in all pitta diseases, in miscarriage, and in burning sensations,

this sprout soup is foremost, and is wholesome in dysmenorrhoeic women.
Of spreading hogweed, rāsnā, yellow wood sorrel, and Indian mallow,

individual soups are described as destroying vāta when prepared with curd and clarified butter.
One should prepare in water a decoction of rohita fry fish;

one should cook that decoction further with vinegar, sour gruel, and curd-whey.
The liquids are [boiled with] crushed seeds; it is cooked with five palas of jaggery:

this kāmbalika is un-unctuous, or made with mustard oil.
It pacifies vāta diseases, is nourishing, and increases strength;

it induces sexual pleasure, sleep, and appetite, or when made with sesame oil.
Digestive stimulants, the pañcamūla, sweet fruits,

all grains as before, coriander, and black pepper,
kākolī, kṣīrakākolī, kāśmarya, parūṣaka,

jujube fruits, horsegram, rāsnā, castor, spreading hogweed,
two palas of puncture vine, and tender parts of horse-radish tree and flame of the forest:

one should cook this in a droṇa of water until reduced to a quarter.
Curd, sour gruel, and vinegar, a prastha each of oil and clarified butter,

There should be one hundred tender radishes stripped of their leaves. / This is the prepared great soup, seasoned with the trio of pungents,

praised in almost all diseases, [especially] combined ones, / in excessive digestive fires, in sleeplessness, and when the limbs, chin, and eyes are stiff.

One should give it with an extract [of herbs], or with a meat extract in equal measure; / or it should be prepared with sesame paste for the relief of chronic diarrhoea.

Garlic soup is taught in its own chapter as destroying vāta. / Soups and gravies are demonstrated earlier as threefold.

Boiling tender radishes in water, pressing them out, the capable [cook], / then frying them in unctuous substance, should then toss in the seasoning.

This radish soup destroys all diseases; / non-acidic, prepared with the juices of water and clarified butter,

it pacifies pitta; fried in sesame oil, it dispels vāta. / These soups, arising from our own treatise, have been declared in detail and in summary.

I shall also describe gruels seasoned with various ingredients, / pacifying various diseases. Listen to the twenty-one gruels:

"What is the difference between boiled rice, thin porridge, and gruel? / Venerable Sir, I wish to hear this." Addressed thus, Kaśyapa said:

"Boiled rice is stated to be granular, well cooked, well steamed, drained, soft, / made with grains of rice that are mostly whole and unbroken.

Being undercooked, unsoftened, broken, undrained, / tasteless, sticky, and cold are the defects of boiled rice.

One should cook rice grains with twenty parts of liquid, / or gruels with fifteen parts, or with ten parts.

With twenty parts [liquid], with broken grains uniform at bottom, middle, and top, / gruel that is drinkable without being taken by hand is peyā, while that with body is yavāgū.

Thick, fragmented, cold, with unbroken rice grains, / slimy, dry, or unwholesome to the heart—this is the collection of defects of a gruel.

Gruel prepared with buttermilk and that prepared with curd, when thick, / prepared so as to be taken by hand, are forbidden for those undergoing therapy.

Hot, thick, loose, made with crushed rice grains: / one should state the virtues and defects of thin porridge to be just like those of gruel.

For persons who have fasted for a long time, milk-gruel is recommended: / pacifying cold pitta, nourishing, and stool-binding.

Cooked with digestive stimulants, gruel relieves colic and stimulates digestion; / cooked with astringents, it is declared to be digestive, appetizing, and stool-binding.

Bael, wood apple, together with pomegranate,
gruel prepared with the trio of pungents and Indian sorrel,

is bowel-binding, stimulating the digestive fire and digestive; / but prepared with the five roots, it is for one afflicted by vāta.

Bala, vṛṣatparṇī, and śālaparṇī,
along with pomegranate and unripe bael fruit—

this gruel is beneficial in diarrhoea from pitta and kapha, / and they say that water is to be drunk there.

This very [gruel] with curd increases relish; prepared with sesame, it destroys tenesmus; / it alleviates aggravated bloody diarrhoea, menorrhagia, and leaking of pregnancy.

With pomegranate, ativiṣā, and sour ingredients,

gruel digests unripe metabolic toxins;

with the juice of yellow-berried nightshade and tribulus, / along with treacle, gruel is beneficial in urinary disorders.

Gruel prepared with natron, viḍaṅga, drumstick tree, and long pepper root, / cooked with buttermilk, destroys worms in abdominal swelling, cough, and assimilation disorders.

With raisins, parched paddy, honey, and long pepper,
along with sārivā, gruel pacifies thirst.

With somarājī it quickly destroys poison; / prepared with wild boar decoction, it imparts strength.

For emaciation, [gruel] of Job's tears is desirable;
with clarified butter and rock salt, it imparts strength;

prepared with water boiled with the ten roots, / it destroys dyspnoea, cough, and kapha.

With pot-herbs, meat, sesame, and black gram, / containing clarified butter, it is unctuous and laxative; / but with the stones of rose-apple and mango, wood apple, and bael, combined with sours, it binds stool.

Cooked with buttermilk, it is for disorders caused by clarified butter;
that very [gruel] with oil-cake is for oil disorders.

Prepared with Malabar spinach and curd, / it brings intoxication and burning sensation to tranquility.

One should prepare these with unfried and well-fried vegetables, taking into account the disease and the patient. / The measurement well known in the world, the estimated measure, and what is weighed on scales— / that is the standard in this treatise; I have nothing [more] to declare on that."

Thus spoke the venerable Kaśyapa.
Thus ends the fourth chapter, named "Instruction on Soups", in the Supplementary Section.