The Compendium of Bheḷa 1.5

Now, by food eaten, drunk, and chewed properly, / the creature's strength is replenished at once, like fire by fuels.

By that very meal, when taken in excessive quantity here, bodily / diseases proliferate when the digestive fire is impaired.

A physician should know that the lightness of food is of two kinds; / learn that heaviness in what is eaten is twofold, as it is being explained.

Food may be light by dose, and some is considered light by substance. / Likewise, it may be heavy by dose, and likewise heavy by substance.

Aged śāli rice, mung beans, hare, partridge, and quail— / whatever else is of such kind is considered light by substance.

Meat from domestic, marsh, and aquatic animals, curd, flour, and what is called sesame— / whatever else is of such kind is considered heavy by substance.

In that regard, when a person eats even a heavy substance in proper dose, / physicians regard his food as indeed light.

Even if one eats śāli and the like excessively, though they are very light, / such food clearly becomes heavy.

One who properly attains satiety with a light substance— / the skilled one should know that food to be entirely wholesome and light.

If one should attain satiety even properly with a substance that is not light, / such food here I declare to be heavy indeed.

Therefore, one should always seek light food that is taken of heavy substances / to two-thirds satiety or half satiety.

Or having obtained a light substance, if one indulges in it excessively, / that [substance], even though light, becomes heavy in the alimentary tract when taken in excess.

A physician who understands heaviness and lightness increases the lives of men; / therefore, one should thus know the heaviness and lightness of substances.

Just so, a man is nourished by wholesome food, / and he declines through unwholesome [food], with wind and the other [morbific entities] corrupted.

In a healthy person, the tissue elements such as blood and the rest increase through food; / but in a diseased person, food then transforms into a morbific entity.

For just as seed on earth is ruined by untimely rain, / and grows through timely rain, so too in an embodied being through the chyle [of food].

And whoever is always generous, with a happy and steady mind, / devoted to light drink, maintaining habituation, keeping far away from offense,

bathed, anointed, garlanded, with teeth cleansed, well adorned, / [practicing] virtue, truthfulness, and non-violence—for life is mostly based on food—

should vomit phlegmatic diseases, and purge biliary ones; / he should administer evacuating enemas for wind diseases, and let blood for blood-born ones.

Or again, he should eat red rice with mung beans, or ṣaṣṭika rice, / well-steamed, in measured quantity, combined with ghee and rock salt.

He should drink soup with a little long pepper and a little honey, / and also milk with a little salt, reduced by half.

Scatterer birds, pecker birds, goats, and wilderness beasts and birds, / and whatever other food is pungent in digestion—that he should always practice.

He should not walk on foot in ploughed ground, rough terrain, or among thorns; / he should not go into thickets, to other men's wives, or into swollen rivers.

He should also avoid quarrel, anger, and nighttime wandering; / he should not be near an elephant, or a horse wet with water.

He should never associate with gossipers, drunkards, / hostile men, barbarians, or deceitful minds.

He should not touch any reptiles or small-footed [creatures]; / he should avoid buffaloes, gayals, rhinoceroses, tigers, and lions.

He should not climb trees or roofs, nor run in the foul water of rain; / he should not go against the direction of cattle, nor between them, nor directly in front.

He should not climb the Himavat mountain immediately after rain; / he should resort to ghee and hot water—this is the highest health. Thus spoke the venerable Ātreya. Thus ends the fifth chapter in Bheḷa. Chapter six. Now we shall explain that which concerns the suppression of urges; thus spoke the venerable Ātreya.