The Compendium of Caraka 5.4

English (machine translation) 5.4

Language: English

5.4.1

Now we shall expound the chapter on prognostic signs regarding the array of sense faculties.

5.4.3

How a physician who knows distinctions should examine the senses of a person,
wishing to know the span of his life—hear that:

5.4.4

One should examine [the senses of] sight and so forth properly through inference;
for direct cognition [is held to be through the senses, but] the senses themselves transcend the senses.

5.4.5

When a person's cognition residing in the senses is observed to be altered
from that of healthy people without cause, that is a sign of death.

5.4.6

Thus has been properly stated the sign foreboding misfortune in the senses;
now learn that same matter once more in detail.

5.4.7

Seeing space as if dense, or the earth as if space—
seeing both these in an unnatural state, he meets death.

5.4.8

One to whose sight the wind moving through the sky becomes visible,
and a blazing fire does not become visible, one should declare his loss of lifespan.

5.4.9

When a man sees a net in perfectly clear water where no net is cast,
whether standing or flowing, he is released from life.

5.4.10

One who while awake sees ghosts, various demons,
or any other prodigy—he is not fit to live.

5.4.11

He who sees a fire that is of natural color as blue and lusterless,
or black, or white, passes to the seventh night.

5.4.12

Seeing rays of light where there are no clouds, or clouds where none exist in the sky,
or lightning without clouds, he meets death.

5.4.13

He who looks upon the clear sun or moon as if it were an earthen vessel
covered with a black cloth—he does not live.

5.4.14

When one sees an eclipse of the sun or moon on a day that is not a new or full moon,
whether diseased or free from disease, that marks the end of his life.

5.4.15

Seeing the sun at night, the moon by day, smoke rising where there is no fire,
or a fire without luster at night, he meets death.

5.4.16

Men wishing to abandon their bodily existence see entities contrary to their marks:
those possessing luster as devoid of luster, and those without luster as possessing luster.

5.4.17

Distorted, discolored, and of altered count,
men see forms without [external] cause at the exhaustion of life.

5.4.18

He who sees invisible things, and he who does not see visible ones—
both of them quickly look upon the realm of Yama, without doubt.

5.4.19

He who hears what makes no sound, and he who does not perceive sounds—
both of these are to be understood by the discerning as if already dead.

5.4.20

The sick person who, closing his ears with his fingers, does not hear
the sound of blazing fire, the intelligent physician should abandon him as one whose life-breath is gone.

5.4.21

He who perceives perversely the goodness or badness of odors,
or does not perceive them at all, one should know him to have lost his lifespan.

5.4.22

He who does not recognize tastes, or does not recognize them as they truly are,
in the absence of stomatitis, the skilled declare that man to be ripe [for death].

5.4.23

Touching hot, cold, rough, smooth, soft, and hard tangibles,
one who is about to die regards them as something other than they are.

5.4.24

Without intense asceticism or proper yoga,
if one perceives beyond the senses, he goes to the dissolution into the five elements.

5.4.25

Apart from visual perception by the senses, whatever man perceives
objects of the senses with other senses without a morbidity—he does not live.

5.4.26

Healthy persons who, through perversions of intellect, frequently see
unreal abnormality in the objects of the senses—one should predict their death.

5.4.27_1

He who understands this cognition of the senses as it truly is—
that physician is fit to know death and life.

Thus, in the treatise composed by Agniveśa and redacted by Caraka, in the section on prognostic signs, the fourth chapter entitled "Prognostic Signs Regarding the Array of Sense Faculties" [is concluded].

Linked texts (1)

Carakasaṃhitā — Agniveśa (Āyurveda) & Caraka, Sanskrit