Ashtangasamgraha 10.7

10.7

For unctuous, light, and hot foods stimulate the digestive fire in the belly, cleanse the internal cavity, do not derange the bodily tissues, digest quickly, and promote the downward movement of vāta.

Likewise, unctuous food strengthens the sense organs, nourishes the body, retards old age, promotes strength, and brings about clarity of complexion.

And light food, by virtue of its natural properties and the like, reaches digestion without oppressing the doṣas and without causing distress.

Even when improperly digested, it produces only slight fault.

Hot food, moreover, stimulates the appetite and dries up śleṣman.

One who eats slowly, however, does not attain satisfaction, eats too much, and the prepared food becomes cold and digests unevenly.

While for one who eats too quickly, talking, laughing, or absent-minded, there may be upward displacement, distress, improper passage of food, and an inability to perceive its qualities and faults.

Likewise, one who misjudges smells, tastes, and tactile sensations due to perversion;

Thirst, an excess of excretions outside the body and in the bodily orifices, a desire for cold, unctuousness, sweating, numbness in the limbs, a burning sensation in the hands and feet, an approach of ants due to excessive sweetness, a fleshy odor of both urine and body, whiteness in the urine, and marked dyspnea, excessive sleep, stupor, and indolence [are symptoms of prameha].

In obstruction of urine and feces, one should apply a comfortable, warm decoction of varaṇa, alambuṣā, eraṇḍa, punarnavā, aśvadaṃṣṭrā, surabhī, and suṣavī, either as an affusion or as a tub bath, for someone whose back, hips, groins, and anus have been well anointed;

or milk with unctuous substance, or simply oil.

When hemorrhoids have been cauterized, in order to soften the feces, one should eat food accompanied by the greens of trivṛt, vāstuka, upodikā, and cuñcuparṇī.

Perception of darkness, brooding contemplation, knitting of the eyebrows, and distortion of the eyes [occur in apasmāra].