The Compendium of Bheḷa 8.6

Listen from me to the equipment for enemas: the nozzle and the unctuous substance in every detail, / as well as the method of their application, their preparation, and their administration.

For children and for the elderly, as well as for the young and the middle-aged, / for the healthy and for the diseased, enema therapy is praised.

The wise state that nozzles are made of gold, silver, copper, / bell-metal, tin, iron, horn, bamboo, bone, and bamboo tips.

In accordance with rank, one should employ these superior and other [materials] / respectively in superior, inferior, and middling persons.

The nozzle should have a rounded tip and be no less than twelve finger-breadths [long]; / the ring should be situated at [the distance of a] finger-breadth, and one must not insert it [past that] into the rectum.

Administration is commended with that which has the shape of a cow's tail, / is very smooth, has a comfortable ring, and has the thickness of the index finger.

Having stayed there for one hundred measures of time, it returns on its own, / provided that fresh unctuous substance, prepared with liquor and meat, is not given at the wrong time.

And that which returns in less time, because of its swiftness, does not purge; / then a moderate [enema] should return somewhat within three hundred [measures].

Thus, an enema which exceeds the course of time and does not return / returns quickly through a sharp non-unctuous enema.

Therefore, one should prepare a sharper enema at the very outset; / for severe obstruction is not commended when preserving the vital breaths.

Therefore, he who understands the time, the disease, the relative strength of non-unctuous enemas, / and the complete symptom complex does not succumb to confusion.

Neither a thunderbolt nor fire could kill from elsewhere in such a manner / as an ill-applied enema could instantly deprive one of vital breaths.

An enema is praised and beneficial to living beings, immediately removing disease when properly returned; / but when not returned, it destroys life through hordes of diseases.

Returning with force, it brings the deeply seated doṣas / that have strayed from their courses back to their path, and directs downward those situated in their course.

The impulse of an enema destroys vāta just as the wind destroys a rain-cloud; / for all disorders of kapha and pitta are subservient to vāta.

There are eighty vātika diseases, forty born of pitta, / and twenty born of kapha; and combinations are not enumerated.

For living beings afflicted always by collections of all these diseases, / the enema is indeed the foremost refuge.

For all these originate from vāta and are under the sway of the enema; / therefore, the enema is called half of all treatment, or even the whole.

A person who regularly resorts to enemas during the four months of the rainy season— / diseases avoid him just as elephants avoid the abode of a lion.

These specific benefits have been explained in the therapy of enemas; / now hear from me the efficacy and the procedure of this non-unctuous enema.

When [the patient] has been sweated, overnighted, and the food is fully digested, one should administer a non-unctuous enema; / it draws out his urine, feces, and phlegm.

It produces the downward movement of vāta and generates strength as well; / the strength of the doṣas, which is fixed like poison and located in the channels—

that administered non-unctuous enema cleanses it all; / for there is no other equal to it against the entire army of diseases.

Just as the parting of disheveled hair [brings order], / so it is through a non-unctuous enema for severely disordered doṣas.

For a non-unctuous enema administered with proper potency and balanced qualities / will quickly eradicate diseases, just as religious merit [uplifts] a righteous man.

In those with difficulty in urination and defecation, in those with colic, in those with abdominal tumors due to vāta, / in upward movement of wind from purgation and the like, in heart disease, in flank pain,

in abdominal enlargements, in urinary disorders, in skin diseases, in those with intestinal parasites, / when combined with phlegm and corrupted by blood,

in all combined [doṣas] and in those arising from sannipāta, / and in those that have gone into the deep tissues, non-unctuous enema is superior.

When kapha resembling a conch or crystal is purged, / apart from urine and feces, that is the sign of [successful] non-unctuous enema.

One should administer an unctuous enema to one who is well cleansed by a non-unctuous enema, not too long past, / well rested, comforted, and fed.

Enema therapies are on one side, and the other treatments on the other; / an enema therapy, when properly applied, acts like nectar.

The semen of a person whose massive obstruction is cleared does not undergo depletion; / it brings about potency with women for men whose semen was diminished.

Even a eunuch becomes a man in every respect through the use of enemas; / and it is held to generate flesh even in emaciated mortals. / Thus said the venerable Ātreya. / Thus ends the sixth chapter in the Siddhisthāna of Bheḷa. / Seventh Chapter. / Now we shall explain the success of dosages of fruits, thus spoke the venerable Ātreya.