The Bower Manuscript 24.1

24.1

II. Fol. 23: Bower manuscript
Śaṅkhapuṣpī, however, is especially promoting of intellect. // 743
A man who drinks liquorice combined with ghee and honey, drinking milk after it and avoiding women, shall live for a hundred autumns. // 744
Or five, eight, seven, or ten long peppers with honey and clarified butter
should be used for one month by one seeking the qualities of a rejuvenating tonic (rasāyana). // 745
Three long peppers each in the forenoon, after eating, and before the meal,
macerated in kiṃśuka alkali and fried in ghee, // 746
combined with ghee, should be used by one desiring the qualities of a rejuvenating tonic
to conquer cough, consumption, wasting, dyspnoea, hiccup, throat disease, // 747
hemorrhoids, impairment of the digestive fire, jaundice, irregular fever,
chronic catarrh, hoarseness of voice, abdominal tumor (gulma), and vātabalāsaka. // 748
Application of long pepper: 5 verses.
Increasing gradually for ten days, a man should increase by ten long peppers a day,
taken along with milk, and similarly drink [milk] after it. // 749
When each meal is digested, he should eat ṣaṣṭika rice with milk and clarified butter.
This is a rejuvenating tonic regimen using a thousand long peppers. // 750
Ground into a paste, they are to be consumed by the strong; boiled, by men of moderate strength.
That regimen which extends only up to three long peppers is the mildest. // 751
It is nourishing, beneficial to the voice, longevity-promoting, curative of enlargement of the spleen and abdomen,
stabiliser of youth, and intellect-promoting: thus is the rejuvenating tonic of long pepper. // 752
Second application of long pepper.
At the beginning of autumn, under the constellation Puṣya, a physician should dig up nāgabalā;
having purified himself, he should reduce its root to fine powder. // 753
Stirring a karṣa measure of that powder into milk, he should make [the patient] drink it;
when it is digested, milk should be drunk, and [solid] food should be avoided. // 754
Gradually over seven nights, he should increase it pala measure by pala measure;
then it should be drunk decreased by a pala measure, so long as no complication arises. // 755
And unseen by women and Śūdras, and dwelling in the forest, this