Ashtangasamgraha 33

English (machine translation) 33

Language: English

33.1

Now we shall explain the chapter named 'The Procedure of Ocular Saturation and Baked Poultice'.
Thus declared the great seers Ātreya and others.
Thus declared the great seers Ātreya and others.

When the eye suffers from darkness, is completely dried up, rough, stiff, crooked, sunken, turbid, shrouded, with falling eyelashes, and is afflicted by diseases such as difficult opening, engorgement of vessels, vascular excitement, arjuna, dry cataract, conjunctivitis, glaucoma, anyatovāta, alternation of vāta, dry minor swelling, and the like, with redness, lacrimation, rheum, and pain having subsided, there one should apply ocular saturation;
but not in an eye whose complications have not subsided, not on a day of excessive cold, heat, rain, or overcast skies, and not in those unsuitable for nasal therapy.
Likewise with the baked poultice as well,
[which is] employed by other means mentioned in the etiology of hemorrhoids.

33.3

Then, when one eighth of the day has passed or remains, in a room free from wind and intense sunlight and free of smoke, fitted with a blue or yellow curtain, for one whose food has digested, who is resting comfortably on a bed, lying on his back, having constructed outside the eye sockets two circular, spacious, even, leak-proof rims two fingers high out of ground black gram paste, one should pour into the closed eyes milk, ghee, or the scum of ghee cooked with the appropriate medicines and liquefied in hot water,
until the eyelashes and eyebrows are submerged.
Then, as he slowly opens his eyes, one should count the measures:
in eyelid disorders, one hundred; in junction disorders, three [hundred]; in sclera disorders, five [hundred]; in cornea disorders, seven [hundred]; in pupil disorders, eight [hundred]; a thousand in glaucoma.
According to each doṣa: a thousand in vāta, six hundred in pitta, five [hundred] in kapha and in the healthy procedure.
Generally preceded by a boil, whether at one finger or two fingers [breadth].

33.4

Then, having made an opening at the area of the outer canthus with a probe, one should drain the unctuous substance into a vessel.
And having removed the two rims and wiped the eye sockets with barley paste, one should administer medicinal smoke as appropriate to pacify the kapha provoked by the unctuous substance.
And one should feed him whose face has been washed with warm water according to his disease,
and he should avoid direct sunlight, open sky, and gazing at luminous objects.
Because it has reached the vicinity of the enema receptacle and bladder, it is of the nature of flowing.

33.5

By this method, [it should be performed] every day in vāta; with an interval of one day in [disorders of] blood and pitta; with an interval of two days in kapha and in a healthy person; / and in combination (saṃsarga) or collective aggravation (sannipāta) [of the doṣas], according to the predominance of the doṣas. / Thus one should perform it for one day, three days, or five days, or until satisfaction [is reached]. / But the signs of satisfaction, non-satisfaction, and excess satisfaction should be declared respectively by healthy condition, disorders of vāta, and disorders of kapha. / [The vāyu] carries vāta, urine, feces, and semen gradually through the minute pores.

33.6

When, however, the tarpaṇa (nutritive eye-bath) has achieved proper application, then in those very same diseases one should administer puṭapāka (closed-vessel heating process). / It is of three kinds: / oleating (snehana), scraping (lekhana), and soothing (prasādana).

33.7

Among those, the oleating one—made with meat, fat, bone-marrow, and lard of marshy (ānūpa) and common (sādhāraṇa) animals, and likewise with sweet substances ground with milk—should be used in a dry eye.

33.8

The scraping one [is made] with the flesh and liver of arid-tract (jāṅgala) animals and birds, and with scraping substances such as pearl, coral, conch-shell, copper, iron, cuttlefish bone, green vitriol, antimony, and rock salt, ground with curd-whey and honey, [and is used] in an unctuous [eye]. / One should know the boil that produces a fistula, but not otherwise.

33.9

The soothing one, however, [is made] with the liver, heart, bone-marrow, and lard of arid-tract animals and birds, and with sweet substances, ground with breast milk, cow's milk, and ghee. / It cures disorders of vāta, pitta, and blood, weakness of vision, and ulceration; it is contraindicated in kapha. / A boil caused by vāta […]

33.10

Now, having combined a ball of minced meat the size of a bilva fruit with a ball of medicine of that very same size, having wrapped it in order with leaves of castor, banyan, and blue lotus in the oleating and other [types of puṭapāka], one should bind it with any of kuśa, muñja, or cord. / And having applied over this a clay coating two finger-breadths thick, one should cook it with wood of any of dhavā, dhanvana, madhūka, nyagrodha, kāśmarya, rājādana, arjuna, naktamāla, and pāṭalī, or with the dung of a cow or buffalo. / When it has become the color of fire, taking it off, removing the clay, cord, and leaves, one should squeeze it with a cloth. / With that juice, in the evening, one should fill both eyes just as in tarpaṇa. / And one should keep it for two hundred measures in oleation, one hundred in scraping, and three hundred in soothing. / [The boil] is red, thin, very hot, and accompanied by fever and a smoking sensation.

33.11

Smoking [should be administered] just as in tarpaṇa, with the exception of the soothing [variety]. / And the first two [liquids should be] lukewarm; / the soothing one [should be] cold. / The puṭapāka should be used for one day, two days, or three days. / And the dietary regimen for tarpaṇa and puṭapāka is twice as long. / And having bound the eyes, one should reside with flowers of mālatī and mallikā. / Likewise, even in ripe diarrhea, this very same method of puṭapāka [is prescribed]. / And here there is a verse:

33.12

Whatever diseases may arise in pouring (seka), collyrium (añjana), tarpaṇa, and puṭapāka / due to a deviation from the rules, one should treat them appropriately.

33.12_1

Thus ends the thirty-third chapter.

Commentaries (1)

Śaśilekhā — Indu, Sanskrit

Linked texts (1)

Aṣṭāṅgasaṃgraha — Vāgbhaṭa, Sanskrit