Ashtangasamgraha 49

English (machine translation) 49

Language: English

49.1

Now we shall explain the chapter called 'The Procedure of Rejuvenation'. / Thus spoke the great seers Ātreya and the others: / Long life, memory, intelligence, health, youthfulness, / luster, color, excellence of voice, and the rise of strength in the body and senses,

49.2

efficacy of speech, virility, and beauty one attains from rejuvenation; / for rejuvenation is the means of obtaining the finest bodily fluids and other tissues.

49.3

In early age or in middle age, it should be administered to one of self-control / who has been oleated, has had blood let, and has been completely purified.

49.4

For when a rejuvenation procedure is applied to an unpurified body, / it does not shine forth, like dye applied to a cloth stained with dirt.

49.5

Just as human endeavor, even if correctly undertaken without negligence, / does not succeed for one devoid of preparatory refinement, so too does rejuvenation fail.

49.6

And all doṣas arise for those who indulge in a rustic diet of sour, salty, pungent, alkaline, incompatible, unwholesome, dry, canal-blocking, moist, heavy, putrid, stale, freshly harvested grains, dried vegetables, raw meat, sesame, kulattha, curds, fermented gruel, vinegar, foods made of flour, and sprouted grains; who are addicted to daytime sleep, women, and alcohol; whose bodies are agitated by irregular and excessive physical exercise and strain; who are prone to anger, greed, fear, grief, and exhaustion; who perform sinful actions; and who are devoted to improper food, conduct, and evacuation of wastes.

49.7

From this cause, indeed, an unpurified chyle is produced, blood is scorched, muscles become flaccid, fat liquefies, the doṣas are corrupted, joints loosen, bones do not unite with marrow, and semen, vital essence, physical strength, and potency do not increase.

49.8

Then, having become thus, he languishes, sinks down, is accompanied by sleep, drowsiness, and indolence, is distressed, becomes despondent, lacks enthusiasm, is incapable of specialized physical and mental activities, loses his complexion, loses his memory, has weak intellect, fails to accomplish desired objectives, sighs day and night continually, and, having become a vessel for diseases, does not attain even the full lifespan that was allotted to him.

49.9

Therefore, the wise person, casting aside the said harmful factors of diet and the like, and having purged those accumulated previously, should resort to rejuvenation prescribed according to the rules.

49.10

And that is twofold: that of entering a hut and that of exposure to wind and sun. / Among those, the hut-entry method is of greater fruit because of the gravity of the potency, special efficacy, application, and restrictions.

49.11

Its procedure is as follows: In a village or town that is secure, abundant in food, where the people, the king, physicians, and brāhmaṇas are righteous and faithful, and where great medicines, ghee, milk, wholesome food, and accessories are easily obtainable, in the northeastern direction, on ground sloping towards the east or north, in an area with well-divided recreational spaces, one should cause a cottage to be built. It should have thick, firm, and well-plastered walls, be well-proportioned in height and width, possess small windows, three concentric chambers, be comfortable in all seasons, free of drafts yet ventilated in one part, with its door facing east or north, surrounded by śamī, vilva, and latex-bearing trees, inaccessible to disagreeable sensory objects, wind, sun, dust, smoke, sweat, moisture, biting insects, mosquitoes, reptiles, wild beasts, children, women, servants, and low-caste persons, and provided with excellent physicians, attendants, and implements nearby.

49.12

In that [cottage], one who desires a rasāyana should enter in autumn or spring, during the bright fortnight, on an auspicious day, after duly worshiping gods, teachers, and brāhmaṇas, bowing to Brahmā, Dakṣa, the Aśvins, and others, touching gold, ghee, honey, white mustard seeds, priyaṅgu, and yellow orpiment, and circumambulating cows and brāhmaṇas.

49.13

There, purified by the purificatory measures, happy, having regained strength, / celibate, endowed with fortitude, faithful, with conquered senses,

49.14

devoted to charity, moral conduct, compassion, truthfulness, vows, and righteousness, / dedicated to the recollection of the deities, moderate in sleep and wakefulness, / fond of medicine, and gentle in speech, he should begin the rasāyana.

49.15

Harītakī, āmalaka, rock salt, ginger, vacā, / turmeric, pippalī, viḍaṅga, and jaggery: he should drink [these] with warm water. / Having first been oleated and fomented, a person is thoroughly purged by this.

49.16

Then, for one whose body has been purified and who has undergone the dietary transition, / one should give barley gruel mixed with ghee for three nights, five nights, / or a week, until old feces are thoroughly eliminated.

49.17

To him whose bowels have been thus conditioned, one should administer the rasāyana / that one considers suitable for him, after considering everything, being knowledgeable about constitutional suitability.

49.18

Because it takes away (haraṇa) all diseases, it is called harītakī; / because it is wholesome (pathya) for all bodily tissues, it is pathyā; and because of its auspiciousness (śivatā), it is śivā.

49.19

Because it overcomes (vijayate) all diseases, it is therefore called vijayā; / because freedom from fear (abhaya) regarding all diseases and perpetual life arise / from using it, it is known as abhayā.

49.20

That which is fresh, round, dense, unctuous, heavy, and sinks in water / should be administered to a young person together with butter.

49.21

In vāta with ghee and salt, in pitta with jaggery and sugar, / in kapha with pippalī and honey: it is commended at all times.

49.22

Now, an āḍhaka of stone-free harītakīs that have grown on the Himālaya mountains, produced in proper season, replete with taste and potency, free from defects, split into two or three pieces, should be boiled with four times as much milk; when softened, taken off [the fire], cooled, mixed with an āḍhaka each of ghee and honey, and kept well concealed. / Then, after three nights, he should consume every day a dose that does not obstruct his meals. When it is digested, he should eat śāli or ṣaṣṭika rice with milk. / And at the end of the regimen, for the very same duration. / From the use of this, a man lives for a hundred years free from old age, free from wrinkles, baldness, gray hair, and disease, endowed with knowledge of sacred texts and memory, and with a blazing digestive fire.

49.23

He comes to have a large body with the strength of iron, a voice resembling the rumble of a mass of clouds, / and abundant, enduring offspring, who partakes of this formulation diligently.

49.24

A thousand pathyā fruits, together with three times as many dhātrī fruits, / two and a half hundred palas of the five sets of five roots,

49.25

having boiled in ten times as much water until a tenth part of the liquid remains; then, having crushed the vijayā and āmalaka fruits and made them seedless,

49.26

having stirred them into that decoction, one should add a kuḍava each / of cinnamon, cardamom, mustā, turmeric, pippalī, agaru, and sandalwood,

49.27

maṇḍūkaparṇī, kanaka, śaṅkhapuṣpī, vacā, plava, / that called yaṣṭī, and viḍaṅga, powdered, totaling more than a tulā,

49.28

and half a bhāra of sugar candy, three pātras of ghee, / and two of oil; one should cook it all on fire until it reaches the consistency of an electuary.

49.29

Taken down and cooled, one should mix it with three hundred and twenty [palas] of honey; / then, churned with a churning stick, one should store it in a ghee vessel.

49.30

This is the Brāhma rasāyana, equal to the previous one in every respect. / The Vaikhānasa and Bālakhilya hermits, having eaten it, attained youthful age, / boundless health, and long life, freed from torpor, fatigue, and exhaustion.

49.31

In a decoction of abhayā, āmalaka, vibhītaka, and the fivefold five roots, / with double the juice of creepers and palāśa, and eight times as much milk, one should cook

49.32

a jar of ghee, along with madhuka, madhūka, the two kākolīs, balā, svaguptā, / with kṣīraśuklā, ṛṣabha, and jīvaka; and he who drinks warm water should drink this rich-in-virtues [ghee].

49.33

A thousand āmalakas, well steamed with the steam of milk according to the method of steaming flour-cakes, dried in the shade, and freed of seeds, one should powder. / Having saturated that with the fresh juice of a thousand āmalakas, blended with an eighth part of powder of sthirā, jīvantī, punarnavā, nāgabalā, maṇḍūkaparṇī, brahmasuvarcalā, abhīru, śaṅkhapuṣpī, vacā, pippalī, viḍaṅga, svaguptā, amṛtā, agaru, sandalwood, madhuka, madhūka flowers, padma, utpala, navamālikā, yuvati, and yūthikā, once again saturated with the fresh juice of a thousand palas of nāgabalā, dried in the shade, made into small pills with double the amount of ghee and honey, placed in a ghee vessel, one should bury it beneath a heap of ashes under the ground for a fortnight, having protections performed by a knower of the Atharvaveda. When the fortnight has passed, having taken it out, mixed with an eighth part of powder of gold, silver, copper, coral, and black iron, he should take it in the morning according to his digestive fire, increasing by half a karṣa [daily]. The rest is equal to the previous formulation.

49.34

One should steam a thousand āmalakas in a fresh palāśa trough that has a cover and does not let steam escape, over fires of wild cow dung. / Taking them out once well-steamed and cooled, deseeded, and crushed, combining them with an āḍhaka each of seeds of pippalī and viḍaṅga, one and a half [āḍhakas] of sugar, and six of honey, ghee, and oil, one should place it in a ghee jar for twenty nights, and afterwards use it. The rest is equal to the previous formulation.

49.35

One should steep a thousand abhayās and a thousand āmalakas together with a thousand pippalīs in the alkaline water of young palāśa and place them in a clean vessel.

Then, after the alkali has penetrated, one should dry them away from the sun, remove the seeds, powder them, mix [the powder] with one quarter part of rock sugar and four times as much honey and ghee, store it in a ghee-vessel beneath the earth for six months, and subsequently consume it according to the strength of one's digestive fire; the rest is identical with what was said before.

49.36

One āḍhaka of āmalaka powder infused for twenty-one nights with āmalaka fresh juice, blended with two āḍhakas each of honey and ghee, one-eighth part of pippalī powder, and one-fourth part of sugar, placed in a ghee-vessel, should be deposited in a heap of ashes during the rainy season.

And one should consume it in autumn; the rest is identical with what was said before.

49.37

One āḍhaka of viḍaṅga grains, one āḍhaka of pippalī grains, one and a half [āḍhakas] of rock sugar, combined with six āḍhakas of honey, ghee, and oil, placed in a ghee-vessel, [deposited] in a heap of ashes during the rainy season—the rest is identical with what was said before.

49.38

Of abhayā, āmalaka, and bibhītaka combined in double or triple amounts, wrapped in palāśa bark, coated with clay, steamed over a chaff fire, and deseeded, one should crush one thousand palas in a mortar, mix it with curd, honey, ghee, oil, meat, and sugar, and eat it without taking other food according to the prescribed procedure. At the end of the course of treatment, for twice that time, one's food should be gruel, soup, milk, ghee, and ṣaṣṭika-rice, with ghee for unction and barley powder for body rubs; the rest is identical with what was said before, or yields even greater results.

49.39

Daśamūla, balā, mustā, jīvaka, ṛṣabhaka, utpala, / the two parṇīs, pippalī, śṛṅgī, medā, tāmalakī, truṭi,

49.40

jīvantī, joṅgaka, drākṣā, pauṣkara, candana, śaṭhī, / punarnavā, the two kākolīs, kākanāsā, and the two amṛtās,

49.41

vidārī, and vṛṣa root—taken together, measured at one pala each— / and five hundred dhātrī fruits, one should boil in a droṇa of water.

49.42

Taking the liquid reduced to one-fourth and the deseeded āmalakas from it, / one should fry them in twelve palas of oil and ghee,

49.43

and cook it like an electuary mixed with half a tulā of candysugar. / When cool, [one should add] half the unctuous substance of honey, four palas of tugākṣīrī,

49.44

two palas of pippalī, and half a pala of caturjāta. / One should have [the patient], residing in a cottage and eating wholesome food, lick a measured dose of this.

49.45

This is Cyavanaprāśa, which having consumed, the sage Cyavana, / even though worn out with old age, became a delighter of women's eyes.

49.46

It dispels cough, dyspnea, fever, wasting, heart disease, vāta-blood, / afflictions residing in the urine and semen, and hoarseness of voice; / it promotes bodily growth in children, the aged, the wounded, the emaciated, and the lean.

49.47

It produces intellect, memory, lustre, freedom from disease, longevity, downward movement of vāta, / delight in women, strength of the senses, and of the digestive fire, when used according to rule.

49.48

Combined with madhuka, with tavakṣīrī, with pippalī, with rock salt, / with the metals separately, with gold, with vacā, with honey and ghee,

49.49

or combined with white sugar, triphalā is a rejuvenating tonic / that destroys all diseases and imparts intellect, long life, memory, and discernment.

49.50

One should smear a new iron vessel with the paste of triphalā; / one should drink that paste, left for a day and night, diluted with honey water.

49.51

An abundant unctuous pacifying drink is commended when it is digested; / from its continuous practice for a year, one lives a hundred years free from disease and aging.

49.52

For a year, one should eat one prāṇadā in the morning, and two akṣas before meals; / at the end of the meal, four dhātrīkās with ghee and honey—this is sufficient to maintain youth.

49.53

Now, one should make iron plates four fingers long and broad and of the thickness of a sesame seed. / Heating them to the color of fire, one should quench them twenty-one times in āmalaka fresh juice. / Throwing one hundred palas of such [plates] into an iron pot, covering them with āmalaka fresh juice, and sealing it well, one should bury it in a heap of ashes. / Month by month, one should take it out and stir it with an iron rod. / As the āmalaka fresh juice dries up, one should add more as before. / In this way, those iron plates turn into liquid after a year. / Then, having later performed emesis and purgation, having the body oleated, one should take one ladleful from that paste using only an iron ladle whose mouth is all around the size of a thumb-joint, and placed in an iron vessel, combine it with a ladleful each of honey and ghee, and consume it. / When it is digested, one should eat fresh ṣaṣṭika-rice mixed with ghee along with milk, meat broth, or soup. / Using it according to this procedure for a year, and spending another year eating the prescribed diet with self-restraint, one should dwell in a cottage. / Then, having conquered all afflictions, invulnerable to diseases, old age, death, weapons, fire, water, and poisons, possessing senses that transcend all worldly things, one lives for two thousand years.

49.54

He will have the speed of a horse, the strength of an elephant, and possess memory and intellect; / he will be eloquent, virile, able to retain what is heard, of great enjoyment, and possessing great wealth.

49.55

This same procedure is applied separately to copper, silver, and gold; / one should know the excellence of their qualities to be double progressively in each subsequent [metal].

49.56

Licking gold, dhātrī fruit, and honey, consecrated with the Gāyatrī verse, / and drinking milk after it, even one who has seen portents of death lives.

49.57

Gold, lotus seeds, honey, parched grains, and priyaṅgu / drunk with milk is the supreme dispeller of misfortune.

49.58

Those who lick gold along with lotus seeds, āmalaka, abhayā, and akṣa, with ghee and honey, / live long, experience slight aging and affliction, and become unassailable to serpents.

49.59

Consuming honey, māgadhikā, essence of viḍaṅga, triphalā, gold, ghee, and white sugar, / one's bodily lustre is untouched by old age, one's bodily tissues are balanced, and one lives for a hundred years.

49.60

Gold, bilva, vacā, and ṛṣi-grass used together / impart intellect, longevity, health, lustre, good fortune, and nourishment.

49.61

Śatāvarī ghee licked with gold and with honey / brings long life and makes even a king obedient.

49.62

One desiring long life should take gold with śaṅkhapuṣpī; one desiring intellect, with ugragandhā; / one desiring fortune, combined with lotus filaments; and one desiring sexual pleasure, combined with vidārī.

49.63

According to the digestive fire, one should use the fresh juice of maṇḍūkaparṇī with milk, powder of yaṣṭīmadhuka, / the juice of guḍūcī along with its roots and flowers, and the paste of śaṅkhapuṣpī.

49.64

These rasāyana remedies bestow longevity, destroy disease, and augment strength, digestive fire, complexion, and voice;
they are intellect-promoting, and among them śaṅkhapuṣpī is especially intellect-promoting.

49.65

Nalada, kaṭurohiṇī, payasyā, madhuka, candana, sārivā, and ugragandhā,
triphalā, the three pungents, the two kinds of turmeric, along with paṭola and rock salt—with these finely ground [as paste],

49.66

along with a triple amount of juice of śaṅkhapuṣpī and with milk, one palvaṇa of ghee is cooked;
having used it, even a dullard becomes eloquent, capable of retaining what is heard, imaginative, and free from disease.

49.67

Ghee cooked with the pastes of the lotus stalk, rhizome, filaments, petals, and seeds, along with gold flakes and milk—
known in the world as 'Pañcāravinda', it should be consumed by those whose virility, strength, and intellect have waned.

49.68

That which is cooked with the stalk, bulb, petals, and filaments of the blue water-lily is also celebrated throughout the earth:
ghee prepared with the four parts of the kuvalaya along with gold foil is intellect-promoting even for cattle, how much more so for human beings!

49.69

Brāhmī, vacā, rock salt, śaṅkhapuṣpī, matsyākṣaka, brahmasuvarcalā, aindrī,
and vaidehikā should each be three barleycorns in weight; two barleycorns of gold, and a sesame-seed's weight of poison;

49.70

and one pala of ghee—one should combine all these together; when digested, one should take a meal rich in ghee
and with honey; practicing this for a whole year, one attains superior intellect, memory, and cognitive capacity;

49.71

surpassing old age, disease, torpor, lethargy, fatigue, and exhaustion,
he lives a full hundred years, endowed with fortune, vigor, loveliness, and radiance.

49.72

In particular, kuṣṭha, kilāsa, abdominal swelling, poison, fever, insanity, slow poison, and enlargement of the abdomen,
as well as malevolent spells wrought by Atharvan incantations and the like, and exceedingly strong vāta ailments are pacified by this.

49.73

On ground possessing the qualities previously mentioned, in the month of Māgha or Phālguna, when the moon is in conjunction with the constellation Puṣya, at an auspicious moment, according to the prescribed rule, one should dig up a nāgabalā plant along with its root, which is grown, neither too young nor old, its old leaves having fallen off and its new leaves not yet appeared.
One should take a lump of the bark of its roots the size of a mango or the size of an akṣa, finely ground or powdered, and drink it with milk, or lick it with honey and ghee.
When it is digested, one must sustain oneself solely on milk.
Or one may eat boiled śāli or ṣaṣṭika rice with milk and ghee.
By using it thus for a year, one becomes free of old age for a hundred years, and so forth, as stated previously.

49.74

Balā, atibalā, candana, agaru, dhava, tiniśa, khadira, kadara, śāka, śiṃśapā, asana, surasā, punarnavā, and anantā—these ten drugs stated to restore youth—together with vidārī, śvadaṃṣṭrā, aśvagandhā, vārāhī, and śatāvarī, are explained in the same manner as nāgabalā.

49.75

Among those, whoever desires the fresh juice of all the heartwood trees should look to the khadira preparation in the treatment of kuṣṭha.
When fresh trees are not available, one should submerge thin chips of the heartwood measuring two or three finger-breadths into a fourfold quantity of water, and keep it in the sun for three nights.
Then, having removed them, one should cast others in there.
And after three nights, others again; in this way, over nine nights, by casting in and removing thrice, a substitute for fresh juice is prepared.

49.76

For fruits, creeping plants, and herbs, however, one should extract the fresh juice by pounding them with a machine or in a mortar and pressing them out.

49.77

For dried plants, however, one āḍhaka of powder steeped in one āḍhaka of water for a day and a night, mashed and strained, is to be used like fresh juice.
For tuvaraka, bhallātaka, and the like, however, the instruction is separate indeed.

49.78

There are trees named tuvaraka growing on the shore of the western ocean,
whose sprouts are tossed by the wind and the agitation of the rolling waves.

49.79

From them, one should gather fully ripe fruits at the onset of the rainy season;
and having extracted the kernels from the fruits, dried them, and powdered them,

49.80

one should press them in a trough like sesame, or boil them like kusumbha;
that oil, once collected, should be cooked again until all the water is consumed.

49.81

Taking it down, one should store it in cow dung for a period of a fortnight;
then, taking it out after a fortnight, a careful person who has been oleated and sweated, and whose waste products have been eliminated,

49.82

skipping three meals, should drink a handful of this oil in the morning
on an auspicious day, reciting this mantra:

49.83

‘O essence of the marrow, of mighty potency, purify all the bodily tissues!
Acyuta, holding the conch, discus, and mace in hand, commands you!’

49.84

By this, his doṣas depart upward and downward repeatedly;
in the evening he should drink cool gruel without oleaginous substance or salt.

49.85

He should drink the oil for five days in this manner, avoiding what must be avoided;
subsisting on food with mudga soup for a fortnight, he is freed from all forms of kuṣṭha.

49.86

That very oil, well cooked in a triple amount of khadira decoction,
stored for a fortnight as before, should be drunk for a month by one who is well self-controlled.

49.87

His body anointed with it, and consuming the diet stated before;
a man with kuṣṭha whose voice is broken, whose eyes are bloodshot, whose limbs are falling off, and who is devoured by worms,
he quickly cures by this application.

49.88

That very oil taken with ghee and honey, without khadira,
with a diet of meat soup for a fortnight, makes a person live for two hundred years.

49.89

That very oil used as nasal medicine for fifty days
makes one free of wrinkles and graying hair, with stable memory, hair, and teeth,

49.90

handsome, capable of retaining what is heard, and living for three hundred years.
Its marrow, thoroughly burned by the antardhūma method and cast into the oil with an equal part of rock salt glowing like fire,
when used as a collyrium, cures pterygium, night blindness, cataract, nīlī eye disease, and timira.

49.91

One eating wholesome food should drink the tuvaraka oil according to the regimen on alternate days for a month;
with purged belly and peeling body parts, he will quickly cast off his skin like a serpent its worn-out slough.

49.92

One should cook one āḍhaka of tuvaraka in sixteen times its measure of water;
when an eighth part remains, having strained it and then pounded it in a mortar,

49.93

mixed and made into paste with a quarter part of the powder of dry āragvadha bark,
one should make pills the size of an udumbara fruit with that decoction water and dry them in the shade.

49.94

A patient with kuṣṭha, having fasted on that day,
should drink one or one and a half of these pills stirred into cow's urine when the sun has set.

49.95

Just as much and in the very same way, the physician who knows the strength of the person and the doṣa
should again make him drink the medicine at dawn, regardless of indigestion or vomiting.

49.96

At midday he should eat millet rice with plenty of niṣpāva oil, with a condiment of radish,
accompanied by curd mixed with a little rock-salt powder, subsequently drinking a little buttermilk mixed with water.

49.97

With his body anointed with oil, he should rub himself on alternate days with millet-husk powder,
and bathe with comfortably warm water; he should abstain from alcohol, meat, and sexual intercourse for thrice the duration of the regimen.

49.98

Diligently taking this entire formulation twice daily, / a person with kuṣṭha overcomes the disease, even if the ears, lips, and nose have withered away.

49.99

Now, one should gather bhallātaka [fruits] that are unblemished, free from disease, endowed with full rasa, size, and vīrya, resembling ripe rose apples, in the month of Śuci or Śukra, and store them in a heap of barley or a heap of black gram. After they have remained there for four months, one should begin to administer them in the month of Saha or Sahasya. Having prepared the body with cool, unctuous, and sweet substances, one should first crush ten bhallātakas and boil them thoroughly with eight times their amount of water. Their decoction, reduced to one-eighth, lukewarm and mixed with milk, should be drunk in the morning by one whose lips, palate, and tongue have been anointed with a gargle of ghee. In this manner, these ten bhallātakas are to be increased and decreased one by one up to thirty. Through this method, a thousand fruits are used, the period [of dietary restriction] is threefold, the diet consists of śāli or ṣaṣṭika rice with ghee and milk; thus, specifically freed from kuṣṭha, piles, worms, prameha, and disorders of fat, one lives for a hundred years free from old age, and the rest is the same as before.

49.100

First, one should drink a decoction of one bhallātaka with milk, and increase by one bhallātaka each day until five [are reached]. Then one should increase by fives until seventy. Having reached seventy, one should reduce them again by fives until five, and from five by ones until one. By this method, a thousand are used, and the rest is the same as before.

49.101

Like seventy, one may also use up to a hundred, and likewise two thousand. The procedure and the rest are the same as before, but the span of life is doubled.

49.102

Having filled a steaming pot with crushed bhallātakas, placed it over an earthen pot that is buried up to the neck in the ground, impregnated with unctuous substance, and sturdy, covered it with a lid, smeared it with black mud, one should steam it with a cow-dung fire. Whatever expressed juice of theirs falls into the pot, one should ingest it mixed with one-eighth part of honey and twice as much ghee. The period is threefold, with ghee and milk, and the rest is the same as before.

49.103

Taking the juice of bhallātaka by this very method, one should take it alone for one month. The threefold period and so on are the same as before. With each month, life increases by a hundred years. Using it in this way for ten months, one attains a lifespan of a thousand years.

49.104

One should take a pātra measure of bhallātaka oil with milk and a madhuka fruit's weight of liquorice, boiled a hundred times. The threefold period and so on are the same as before.

49.105

Bhallātaka oil, black sesame oil, ghee, āmalaka juice, and the decoction of the heartwood of the asana group—a droṇa of each of these; and one pala each of triphalā, the three pungents, embelia, plumbago, the two curcumas, trivṛt, dantī, indrayava, liquorice, viṣā, ativiṣā, rasāñjana, and priyaṅgu—boiling these together according to the method for preparing medicated oils, taking it down, and straining it, one should store it carefully. Then, having prepared the body, one should take the measure of a clenched fist with honey every morning. When it is digested, one should eat soft boiled rice prepared with khadira water, accompanied by a salt-free soup of mung beans and āmalaka with ghee. Water-related activities are to be done with khadira water. By using a droṇa in this manner, being freed from kuṣṭha, piles, and so on is the same as before.

49.106

Plump bhallātakas, fallen when ripe, measuring one āḍhaka, / rubbed with brick powder, washed with water, and dried in the wind,

49.107

one should crush and boil in a pot of water; when one-fourth remains, it is strained, cooled, and / that juice should be boiled again along with a pot of milk until one-fourth remains.

49.108

With an equal amount of ghee cooked with it, one should mix sugar powder as desired; / blended together by agitating with a churning stick, it should be kept well concealed in grain for seven nights.

49.109

He who takes this cooked elixir like ambrosia in the morning and drinks as much water, milk, or meat-broth as desired, / endowed with memory, intellect, strength, wisdom, and vigorous essence, fair as a touchstone of gold, enjoys a long life.

49.110

In a droṇa of water boiled down to an āḍhaka of decoction from three hundred bhallātakas, / a pātra of sesame oil prepared with one pala each of tiktā, the two viṣās, the three myrobalans, śilājatu, and rasāñjana is supreme for destroying all forms of kuṣṭha.

49.111

Together with āmalaka fruits, or with the crust of yogurt or with oil; / with jaggery, with milk, with ghee, or with roasted barley flour; / with sesame, with honey, with oil cake, or with soup; / bhallātaka builds the body, is supreme for the intellect, and prolongs life.

49.112

Bhallātaka fruits are sharp, ripening, and fiery as Agni, / yet when administered according to rule, they become like nectar.

49.113

There is no kapha-born disease, nor any constipation whatever, / which bhallātaka does not quickly destroy, giving strength to the digestive fire.

49.114

Even with the regimen of wind and sun, one should especially avoid / horse gram, yogurt, sour gruel, oil massage, and exposure to fire.

49.115

One seeking rejuvenating qualities should take five, eight, seven, or ten / long peppers with honey and ghee for one whole year.

49.116

Three long peppers in the forenoon, after eating, and before a meal, / soaked in palāśa-alkali and fried in ghee, / should be administered mixed with honey by one desiring rejuvenating qualities.

49.117

Increasing by steps for ten days, one should increase / by ten long peppers a day along with milk, and then reduce in the very same way.

49.118

When the medicine is digested, one should eat ṣaṣṭika rice with milk and ghee; / this administration of a thousand long peppers is a rasāyana.

49.119

Pounded, they should be drunk by the strong; boiled, by men of moderate strength; / cooled [after boiling], they should be given to those of weak strength, according to the doṣas and diseases.

49.120

Likewise, one may administer two thousand with goat's milk.

49.121

Through these administrations, long peppers destroy cough, dyspnea, choking in the throat, / consumption, urinary disorders, chronic diarrhea, piles, anemia, intermittent fever, / swelling, vomiting, hiccup, spleen enlargement, and gout.

49.122

One should consume viḍaṅga powder combined with yaṣṭīmadhuka powder in equal parts with cold water.

When it is digested, one should eat cooked rice with ghee and unsalted mudga soup.

By this, specifically, parasitic worms, hemorrhoids, kuṣṭha, urinary disorders, and medas disorders are removed, and one remains unaging for a hundred years, and so forth, as stated previously.

One should consume these four formulations for a month: viḍaṅga powder with honey and bhallātaka decoction, with honey and āmalaka juice, and with guḍūcī decoction; this is similar to the previous [procedure].

And in all these, month by month, there is an increase of a hundred years of lifespan.

49.123

One suffering from fistula-in-ano, stiffness of the thighs, abdominal swelling, or cough should drink alambuṣā impregnated with its own juice, separately with ghee, milk, honey, or hot water,
likewise with fermented gruel, buttermilk, or whey.

49.124

It is hot in post-digestive effect, pungent, and astringent and sweet in taste;
it is an extreme stimulant of the digestive fire, promotes intellect, and destroys vāta and śleṣman.

49.125

From using it for a year, it makes a man live for a hundred years,
with firm senses and digestive strength, and free from wrinkles, gray hair, and diseases.

49.126

Having sun-dried white avalguja fruits and powdered them, one should pound them together with an equal quantity of jaggery and place them in a ghee vessel within a heap of grain for seven nights.

Then, before the sun has risen, one should consume an appropriate dose according to one's strength, using warm water as an after-drink.

When it is digested, having bathed with comfortable warm water, one should eat cooked śāli or ṣaṣṭika rice with sweetened milk.

From using it for a month, specifically, one becomes free from kuṣṭha, endowed with power of apprehension and retention, unaging for a hundred years, and so forth, as stated previously.

And after the treatment, the dietary restrictions are observed for twice the duration [of the regimen].

49.127

One should drink one karṣa of vākucikā powder with comfortable warm water.

Having drunk it, one should remain in the sunlight or in a warm, windless inner chamber; in the afternoon, one should take a bath and meal in the very same way,
or with soup and meat broth.

From using it for three times seven nights, one becomes free from kuṣṭha, and so forth, as stated previously.

49.128

Having shed skin, body hair, head hair, teeth, and nails, he obtains new ones again;
and he gains [improved] voice, complexion, strength, energy, youth anew, and destruction of gray hair.

49.129

Ten palas of bākucī, and ten of the three fruits (triphalā);
seven of viḍaṅga, three of iron, two of śilājatu;

49.130

one pala each should be taken of guggulu and puṣkaramūla;
half a pala of fine cardamom; the three pungents, mustā, nāgakesara, saffron;

49.131

lodhra bark, tejapatra, yaṣṭīmadhu, and citraka, one karṣa each;
and a hundred bhallātaka [fruits], with an equal amount of candied sugar for the whole;

49.132

one should powder [them]; then one should eat the supreme dose of one pala of it.
Acting as one pleases, after a year one attains the qualities of a rejuvenating therapy (rasāyana).

49.133

It conquers all diseases, especially skin disorders,
hemorrhoids, fistula-in-ano, dyspnea, cough, jaundice, and parasitic worms,

49.134

abdominal swelling, spleen enlargement, urinary calculus, scrotal enlargement, urinary disorders, anorexia, chronic rhinitis,
sluggish digestive fire, emaciation, swelling, benign glandular swellings, and even tumors.

49.135

One should soak vākucikā fruits in cow's urine for seven nights.
Then, having dehusked them, dried them in the shade, and finely ground them into powder, one should impregnate it for three days each in succession with triphalā decoction, with the fresh juices of kāravallī, vāsā, brāhmī, guḍūcī, and bhṛṅgarāja individually, and with decoctions of khadira, asana, rājavṛkṣa, and picumanda.

49.136

One karṣa of this [powder], drunk daily drowned in āmalaka fruit juice,
destroys all diseases, especially skin disorders.

49.137

Licking somarājī impregnated with decoctions of asana and khadira,
combined with honey, ghee, citraka, harītakī, and iron powder,
for a year, eating moderately and wholesomely,
one casts off the disorders of aging, and likewise those born of food.

49.138

He whose body is enveloped by severe kuṣṭha, who eats somarājī with discipline
for a year accompanied by black sesame,
surpasses [even] the crescent moon (somarājī) in bodily beauty.

49.139

Those who, from well-prepared milk combined with the powder of dehusked somarājī,
extract the butter and lick it with honey, and drink that very buttermilk afterwards,

49.140

those patients with kuṣṭha, even with eyes destitute of eyelashes
or with destroyed ears, fingers, and nose,
leaving behind deformity and putting on beauty,
shine like trees grown green again.

49.141

Or the patient with kuṣṭha, exposing himself to the sun, should drink it with khadira water, or gruel prepared with it
and cooked in khadira water, using that water for all purposes.

49.142

Somarājī combined with elephant-dung alkali, for those who drink that alkali and eat thick gruel,
forcibly destroys leucoderma, both [internally] and from external application.

49.143

Having soaked somarājī fruit in cow's urine for seven nights and stirred it,
one should dry it in the shade; and similarly dried prāpunāṭa fruit separately.

49.144

One part of both, and an equal part of viḍaṅga, citraka, and bhallātaka; this powder,
used with cow's urine by one who eats measured and wholesome food, quickly destroys leucoderma.

49.145

Bākucikā drunk with a decoction of ikṣura, gokṣura, siṃhī, vyāghrī, and pañcāṅgula
destroys gravel or solid stone in those who eat with meat broth.

49.146

Ground with hot water and drunk mixed with ghee, it conquers abdominal swelling;
when it is digested, one should take thin gruel prepared with the lesser five roots (laghupañcamūla).

49.147

Taken with decoctions of kaṭvaṅga and kuṭaja, it destroys hemorrhoids and fistula-in-ano;
consumed with unadulterated wines, bākucī destroys severe urinary disorders.

49.148

Drunk with broth of gallinaceous birds, with daśamūla decoction, or with guḍūcī,
it destroys apataṃtraka or tetanus in those eating rice with meat broth.

49.149

In abdominal enlargements, one should drink it with urine; in ascites, with soup of trivṛt;
in swelling and jaundice, avalguja [should be drunk] with śobhāñjana and ariṣṭa.

49.150

In scrotal enlargement, it is commended with decoction of ikṣuraka and others, or with cow's urine;
joined with warm milk straight from the udder, it destroys swelling and fever.

49.151

It should be administered with hot water in bites of spiders, insects, rats, and snakes;
and a lukewarm decoction of viḍaṅga and āragvadha in those whose viscera have worms.

49.152

Having drunk the crescent of the moon (somarājī) with ghee and warm water at the onset of menses,
and eating with milk boiled with aśvagandhā, a woman becomes a mother of sons.

49.153

Even a barren woman who performs this regimen for seven days, gladdening [her husband], fragrant,
speaking pleasantly, endowed with good observances and cleanliness, gives birth without fail to virtuous sons.

49.154

Joined with unctuous, hot, and sweet substances, it removes vāta disorders; with bitter, sweet, and astringent,
it removes pitta disorders; and those born of kapha, with triphalā juice and honey.

49.155

Thus, this auspicious pacifier destroys poison, artificial poison, evil spirits, afflictions, and sins;
even kept in the house, this lunar crescent (somarājī) protects—how much more when residing in the belly?

49.156

Even a person whose command of death has arrived, whose intellect and senses are destroyed, and who possesses little consciousness,
avalguja liberates from great fear, and grants abundant prosperity and intellect.

49.157

One should drink a lump, the size of an āmalaka fruit, of snow-white vacā stirred in milk; when it is digested, the diet consists of milk, ghee, and boiled rice.
In this way, within seven days and nights, one becomes wise.
In seven [cycles of] seven nights, one becomes one who retains what is heard, free from old age for a hundred years, and so on, just as described previously.

49.158

Of the other variety of vacā also, one should drink a decoction of two palas; when digested, milk, ghee, etc., just as described previously.
Or one may lick its powder with honey and ghee according to one's strength.
When digested, milk, ghee, etc., just as described previously.

49.159

By using a droṇa of ghee cooked a hundred times with a paste of vacā, one becomes especially freed from seizure by spirits, insanity, epilepsy, goitre, scrofula, elephantiasis, and hoarseness, attains success in all matters, and lives for a hundred years.

49.160

Now will be declared the regimen of garlic, a medicine for those whose bodies are frozen by cold winds and frost,
whose bones are stiff, broken, crooked, or diseased, and who are afflicted by vāta.

49.161

When severed because of the theft of the nectar of immortality, the drops of nectar
that fell to the earth from Rāhu's throat transformed into garlic (rasona).

49.162

Therefore, the twice-born do not eat it, since it originated from the body of a Daitya;
yet, because it was produced directly from the nectar of immortality, it is the foremost of rejuvenators (rasāyana).

49.163

One whose kapha is predominant should use garlic in the cold season and in spring;
one suffering from vāta, even at the arrival of clouds; or at all times with the delicacy of summer;
[for] in one afflicted by a bleeding disorder, diseases caused by a bleeding disorder arise.

49.164

A month is supreme for the consumption of its juice and paste; they also prescribe it at will, but with roasted meats
for six months by another method; they say that even a fortnight's use is inferior in the case of garlic.

49.165

His body unctuous and purified, with his stomach prepared with cold and sweet substances,
having an inner courtyard strewn with attendants who have its [garlic's] crests and ear-ornaments,

49.166

At the end of spring, he should steep its bulbs, grown in the Himālayas or the Śaka country,
with their outer skins removed, at night in spirits or the like.

49.167

In the morning, the fresh juice squeezed from its paste through clean cloth,
combined with a third part of well-fermented spirit,

49.168

Or of another wine, buttermilk, whey, or fermented gruel,
or combined at that very time, having considered the appropriate measure,

49.169

Separately with oil, ghee, muscle fat, marrow, milk, and meat juices,
or with a decoction according to the disease, or the juice alone;

49.170

First, one should drink just a mouthful to cleanse the throat and channels;
and continuous sudation immediately afterward is praised in case of pain.

49.171

A sudden sprinkling with cold water on the face in vomiting and fainting;
one should drink the remainder when exhaustion departs and the vital essence becomes stable.

49.172

To avoid burning, [one should apply] extremely cold unguents,
and wear garlands of pearls and camphor accompanied by water droplets.

49.173

With lotus stems holding frosty water inside and white as the moon, lotus-petal garlands, and tremulous pearl necklaces
placed upon the slopes of their breasts, beautiful-limbed women smeared with thin, moist sandal paste should embrace him tightly.

49.174

With breezes from lotus leaves and palm-leaf fans, with dripping water drops, and with hands moist with water,
and with the cool sprout-like hands of beloved women, they should remove the exhaustion caused by garlic and sweating.

49.175

A kuḍava is its maximum dose, but half of that when taken alone;
or one should take a pala of its ground pulp, combined with food and prior [to it].

49.176

For its taste is like fire, and suddenly uniting
with weak vital essence,
it would cause burning, diarrhea, restlessness, and loss of consciousness;
therefore, one should not employ it in haste.

49.177

When it is digested, one should eat boiled rice of aged śāli rice, white as a conch shell, kunda flower, or the moon,
with vegetable soups, milk, or juices of arid-land animals.

49.178

One with a blazing digestive fire should eat thin cakes sprinkled with a thick layer of ghee,
adorned with circular slices of onion looking like the full disc of the moon,

49.179

Accompanied by pork strips whose heaviness is removed
by contact with mustard and vinegar, and which are white with flour-paste powder.

49.180

One should drink only wine, mixed with water if there is continuous thirst,
perfumed with intoxicating fragrance, humming with bees, and awakened by the moon of the beloved's face.

49.181

He who is a non-drinker of wine, however, [should drink] fruit juice, buttermilk, avantisoma, fragrant and cold
sauvīraka, or meat juice of arid-land animals, or tuṣodaka, or rice-scum water.

49.182

Or its paste along with an equal amount of ghee, beaten with a churning stick in a ghee vessel
and kept for ten days, one should eat; or likewise with an equal amount of muscle fat.

49.183

Or freshly ground, combined with ghee, and mixed at will with its own juice,
one should employ this with the very drinks mentioned earlier, with lukewarm water; this recipe is exceedingly potent.

49.184

Garlic paste with an equal amount of goat's ghee, kept underground for six months,
used for massage, drinking, collyrium, and nasal errhine, destroys mental disorders and intermittent fever.

49.185

Or with an equal amount of oil, or with vinegar, placed in a heap of barley;
eating it while dining predominantly on ghee and meat, one conquers vāta diseases.

49.186

One should take one tulā each of oil, ghee, jaggery, and white sugar,
two tulās of cleaned garlic, three kuḍavas of the three pungents,

49.187

And a pala of fine cinnamon, placed in a ghee vessel
within a heap of barley for two years; it is superior in qualities to the former.

49.188

One should put one pounded tulā of bulbs into twenty palas of buttermilk,
and when seven days and nights have passed, half a tulā of black sesame,

49.189

Washed and crushed, four palas each of honey, ghee, and dried ginger,
and cumin, chabya, coriander, chitraka, the two peppers, vidanga, and ajowan,

49.190

One pala each of these, and one pala of well-powdered caturjāta,
eight palas each of oil, ghee, and crushed mustard;

49.191

One should add five salts and two alkalis in the measure of an akṣa each;
kept in grain for eleven days, eating it morning after morning,
he, free from disease, attains all the benefits of a rejuvenator.

49.192

In a decoction of the two pañcamūlas, one āḍhaka of crushed garlic
steeped in a vessel for a year destroys diseases of vāta and kapha.

49.193

In the paste and fresh juice of its bulbs, one should cook ghee and oil separately;
and afflicted by terrible vāta, one should use it according to what is suitable to oneself.

49.194

Or one suffering from facial paralysis should eat it with an equal part of fresh butter mixed into its paste.

49.195

Eating light and meager food, one should drink wine at will, with various appetizers,
containing spits of roasted meat and abundant peel-less garlic inside, or roasted meats accompanied by ghee and vinegar.

49.196

with [various foods] sprinkled with fine powders of coriander, cumin, roasted mudga beans, and sauvarcala salt, / adorned with garlic cloves, sprouts, and leaves, along with condiments endowed with multiple tastes.

49.197

One fearing kapha, pitta, or vāta should drink vegetable broths, milk, or meat broths prepared with its bulbs in due order, / processed with drugs appropriate to each [doṣa].

49.198

An emaciated person should eat garlic sprinkled with powder of aśvagandhā; one who has lost his voice, with licorice; / one with an abdominal swelling, with oil; one with skin disease, with khadira; and one with parasitic worms, with anti-parasitic drugs.

49.199

With the meat of carnivorous animals, he overcomes consumption; with kuṭaja bark, piles; / and with triphalā, urinary disorders, cough, dyspnea, and vilambikā.

49.200

Having understood its true nature by knowing the nature of foods, / its administration should be carried out appropriately against each specific disease.

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Commentaries (1)

Śaśilekhā — Indu, Sanskrit

Linked texts (1)

Aṣṭāṅgasaṃgraha — Vāgbhaṭa, Sanskrit