The Compendium of Bheḷa 6.4

In dreams, they constantly see withered and burnt trees; / and flies, grass, and hairs fall into his food;

his body hair and head hair grow excessively; / he is prone to veiling himself, desirous of solitude, and prone to outbursts of anger;

loathsome, intolerant, desirous of women, with weakened faculties; / his usual complexion declines, and dryness of the palate arises;

nasal discharge, catarrh, hoarseness, headache, / both thighs sweat excessively, and there is loss of strength and complexion;

fullness of the head, and burning in the hands and feet; / anorexia, indigestion, fainting, dyspnea, and mild fever;

and wounded in the chest, he spits bloody matter with coughing. / These are proclaimed as the premonitory symptoms of those with consumption (yakṣman).

One should observe those six and eleven symptoms in one who is wasting; / and him, afflicted with prominent secondary complications and premonitory symptoms,

and whose strength and flesh are completely wasted away, one should not treat for wasting; / [only one] joined with minor secondary complications, and arisen with recent secondary complications,

one who possesses resources and is of prime age, having declared [the prognosis], one should indeed undertake [to treat]. / Now, I shall declare the treatment that was formerly approved for him,

having learned which with proper application, a physician attains fame and heaven. / A wasting patient is constantly prone to disgust and fond of comfort;

fickle, hating low things, and contemptuous of physician and medicine. / Therefore, by a physician who is accommodating to him, reassuring,

unflustered, and skilled, treatment should be applied. / Now, for a wasting patient who has strength, pañcakarma is prescribed;

that very [treatment] applied to one whose flesh is depleted would be perilous. / For him whose body has been purified, one should prepare meals:

kalamā and dīrghaśūka rice, red rice along with ṣaṣṭika, / preparations of barley food, and dry-land game animals and birds.

In meals they praise mudga beans for soup; / grain that has stood for one year is beneficial in the diet of wasting patients,

for that is not lacking in potency; and meat that is freshly killed, / and especially the meats of carnivorous animals and hole-dwellers.

A wasting patient should constantly partake of various types of liquor. / Kapha, though increased in the body, driven strongly by vāyu,

vitiating pitta and blood, blocks the upward channels. / Those tissues, mutually blocked and propelled by the wind,

predominated by kapha, obstruct all the chyle-carrying vessels. / Then those chyle-carrying vessels that lead to the heart

do not convey the chyle produced from food as formerly. / His consumed food does not contribute to blood, nor to flesh,

nor to fat, bone, and marrow, nor to semen in embodied beings. / For them, as their tissues do not increase and are blocked in their pathways, then,

even though they eat, the limbs of embodied beings become diseased; / for that reason they waste away, and become wasting for those who are wasting.

The wise call this the primary nature of wasting (śoṣa). / Extreme churning force among living beings is like the action of a beast of prey in distress;

likewise, the meats of those [carnivores] also dilate the channels; / because of their churning force, they purify even knotted channels.

Therefore, the wasting patient should partake of meats of carnivores according to capacity; / this is the secret of physicians taught by medical practitioners.

Liquor and the meat of carnivores are like nectar to wasting patients: / wolves, jackals, bears, dogs, lions, tigers, along with pigs,

should be given under the name of deer (eṇa), seasoned with various substances. / Vultures, swans, owls, frogs, falcons, and crows

one should give under the name of peacock, and he should regularly drink liquor. / Mice, cats, foxes, snakes, and hedgehogs,

mongooses, and roosters—these he should eat, well prepared. / One should administer these meats under the instruction of other meats;

or he may vomit out of disgust; [the physician] should be extremely attentive at every step. / Therefore, he should eat these meats prepared in secret.

Procuring as available the meats of hole-dwellers and carnivores, / the physician should then boil one tulā in ten droṇas of water.

When one-eighth remains, the physician should strain the broth. / With a paste of the jīvanīya herbs, he should cook a droṇa of ghee.

He should drink that ghee according to measure, and with it prepare meat. / Cough, dyspnea, along with heart disease, fever, and pain in the sides,

swelling, and hoarseness of voice it removes in wasting patients. / The greater and lesser pañcamūla, golomī, madhuka, balā,

one should cook in a droṇa of water until reduced to a fourth part. / In that strained decoction water, one should cook a prastha of ghee,

with four times as much milk and the pounded jīvanīya herbs; / and likewise of the juices of vidārī, āmalaka, and sugar cane,

one should add parts equal to the ghee; one should cook that with a gentle fire. / It is renowned as a rejuvenating ghee that brings strength,

dispelling heart disease, chest-wound cough, and wasting diseases. / From this one may make a ghee confection (sarpiṣ-guḍa) combined with sugar and honey,

or one may prepare modaka sweetmeats along with wheat flour; / in the aforementioned disorders, it is like nectar for wasting patients.

Those modakas, increasing strength, are to be eaten with milk as an after-drink; / they are to be consumed with liquor as an after-drink if the wasting has an excess of kapha.

Combining half a prastha of washed and husked sesame seeds ground into a paste / with a prastha of water, one should cook a prastha of ghee.

Then, cooked and strained, one should cook that ghee again / with the meat of carnivores and with milk here in every way,

with a lump measuring a bilva, continually steeped with water, / and with well-prepared meat of dry-land animals, one who knows the procedure [should do so].

Then, cooked and strained, he should place it on the fire again / along with a prastha of milk in properly one āḍhaka of sugar cane juice,

vidārī, mudgaparṇī, māṣaparṇī, kaseruka, / śṛṅgāṭaka, lotus fibers, lotus seed, along with jīvaka,

kṣīraśuklā, along with ṛṣabha, medā, and likewise madhuka, / payasyā, kṣīrakākolī, and tuber of blue water lily,

along with tālakadamba—pastes of these measuring an akṣa each; / stirring that all into it, he should cook it with a gentle fire.

Having strained that when cooked, so that it becomes like nectar when protected from the wind, / then in the morning, when it has thickened, one should thoroughly churn it with a churning stick.

Then into this, sugar powder measuring fifty palas / one should add while churning, and having added repeatedly, churn.

And for fragrance, cinnamon bark and nāgapuṣpa powder should be added here; / blended into one, it should then be kept for one night.

And modakas should be made resembling the measure of an akṣa, / dusted with barley flour, wheat flour, and tugākṣīrī.

One should eat the modakas at the proper time and drink a potion of milk afterwards; / these pacify consumption (yakṣman) just as Indra's thunderbolt does a tree.

Menorrhagia (asṛgdara), chest wounds, debility, heart disease, intermittent fever, / madness, internal hemorrhage, and cough—one should conquer with this.

Then the roots of aśvattha, the leaf-buds, along with fruits, / śatāvarī, pṛśniparṇī, bṛhatī, kaṇṭakārikā,

golomī, śreyasī, kālā, śāribā, along with punarnavā, / crushed, one should boil in ten droṇas of milk.

That boiled [milk], cooled and strained, one should churn with a churning stick; / whatever ghee is produced there, having extracted that, one should cook it.

And there one should employ these crushed medicines: / madhuka, madhulī, drākṣā, medā, vṛṣabha, and jīraka,

pulp of palmyra, pulp of mango, and also puṣkarabīja, / jīvanī, trāyamāṇā, the two madhukas, and kaśeruka,

blue water lily, puṇḍarīka, brinjal, and uccaṭā, / or the fresh juice of kāśmarī, āmalaka, sugarcane, and vidārī.

When it is prepared and strained, one should place it in a sturdy silver vessel; / and having added half a tulā of sugar, one should churn it.

And one should cast in a prastha of tugākṣīrī and a prastha of honey, / and [a prastha each] of the fruit of ātmaguptā, jaggery, and pepper,

and of uccaṭā and sugarcane juice one should add two prasthas there; / one should add there the powder of cinnamon, cardamom, and nāgapuṣpa.

Having made modakas of one pala each, one should store them in a new earthen jar; / a man should eat one pala of it in the morning, and again one pala in the evening.

He should resort to a soft bed, celibate and composed in mind; / by this treatment, he certainly removes consumption.

And it nourishes an emaciated man whose faculties are weakened; / this is also an aphrodisiac for men whose semen is depleted.

Those worn out by women, worn out by heavy burdens, decrepit, and past their youth, / those whose flesh is depleted, whose strength is depleted, and whose blood is depleted,

in bile disease, internal hemorrhage, wasting, and fever born of the doshas, / those whose faculties are destroyed, whose semen is lost, and whose throats are obstructed,

and men who are powerless, weak, and whose senses are destroyed— / this formulation, like ambrosia, makes them renewed.

In cases of epilepsy, insanity, heart disease, and apatan-trakam, / or those whose vital energy has been stolen by some demonic influence,

these modakas, followed by milk as a drink, indeed effect immediate nourishment / for wasting patients whose tissues are disordered and very meager, and whose bodily faculties are weak.

Even with a hundred formulations, it is cured only with difficulty; / therefore, when consumption increases, the physician [should administer] the rejuvenation regimen,

he should employ it for a year, an autumn season, or a half-year: / the gradually increasing pippalī, increased by fives,

praised in nasal therapy, massage, drinks, and enema treatment, / in all wind diseases, chest-lesion wasting, and stiffness of the head,

in flank pain, urinary disease, gulma, hemorrhoids, and fistula-in-ano, / for those suffering from dislocations, fractures, and loss of limbs, and in cough, dyspnea, and cardiac spasm,

in fever with diarrhea, anorexia, discoloration, and loss of voice. / This Sukumāra oil brings comfort to children and the elderly;

for it is aphrodisiac, strength-giving, and promotes flesh within a month; / it confers voice and complexion, and is like ambrosia for those with wasting.

And whatever residue of this oil is obtained when it is properly prepared, / even that, like buttermilk serving in place of curds, can perform the task.

The eleven and the six complications that arise from wasting, / Sukumāra pacifies, as a rain-cloud pacifies fires.

One should cook a prastha of oil of hulled sesame seeds, / and here the paste is a pala of madhuka, with four times as much milk.

And when that is prepared with gentle boiling, one should cook it yet again / with four times as much milk and a pala of madhuka.

And by this method one should cook a hundred [palas] of madhuka; / cooked a hundred times, it is known as śatapāka.

In drinking, massage, nasal therapies, enemas, the preparation of sauces, / and in food, it is like ambrosia for men suffering from consumption.

Heart disease, dryness of the palate, flank pain, convulsions, / thirst, insanity, erysipelas, cough, dyspnea, menorrhagia,

internal hemorrhage aggravated and surging in every direction, / jaundice, and chlorosis—it checks these through drinking.

Stomatitis, conjunctivitis, deafness, earache, / night-blindness, timira, kāca, cataract, engorged vessels,

biḍālikā, foul nasal discharge, head disease, and stiffness of the head— / administered through the nose, it dispels [these] as well as baldness and greying of the hair.

In downward internal hemorrhage, bleeding piles, fistula-in-ano, / in wind pervading the entire body arising from internal hemorrhage,

in women without offspring, and when the semen of men is destroyed, / in bent joints of the knees, sacrum, and so forth, it is praised in enema treatment.

For those with many obstacles and those constant with women, it is considered the supreme aphrodisiac; / and applied methodically, it is an unsurpassed rejuvenator.

One should prepare 'thousand-cooked' (sahasrapāka) by this same rule; / they say this rejuvenator confers a thousand years on men.

Aśvagandhā, apāmārga, nākulī, white mustard, / sesame, and bilva should be the paste; there, anointing [with it] is supreme for consumption.

The man should be endowed with auspicious conduct and perform blessings; / the wasting patient should constantly perform baths, rites of pacification, and fire-oblations.

Sacrifices prescribed in the Veda are destroyers of consumption; / one should constantly resort to them and worship the bull-bannered [Śiva].

And whatever six and eleven complications are mentioned in wasting, / one should treat them according to their respective therapeutics.

Thus has the therapeutics of consumption been spoken by the disciplined one, / conferring fame and heaven, auspicious, for the success of his pupils’ purpose. / So spoke the venerable Ātreya. / Thus ends the fourth chapter in Bheḷa’s Therapeutics. / Chapter Five: / Now we shall explain the therapeutics of gulma, as the venerable Ātreya said: