History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c24.s5.12

v1.c24.s5.12

The Vṛkṣāyurveda of Surapāla gives detailed instructions about the preparation of manures and their applications32. These include a few general recipes with some specific ones for particular plants. In this text we have two sections, entitled, corpse-water(kuṇapa-jala)(verses 97-106) and nourishment (poṣaṇa) (verses 107-64), dealing with manures and fertilising prescriptions. It requires the pit at the root of a plant to be treated by besmearing with the paste of sesamum, oil cake and Viḍaṅga, sprinkling with the milky water or corpse-water, fumigating with ghee and remedying with oil-cake. Water, in which dung, fat, flesh, marrow, brain and blood of a hog is buried under the earth for a fortnight, is called kuṇapa (corpse-water) (verse 105). A second method of preparing it is to collect as much as available lymph, narrow and flesh of a horse, hog, fish, sheep, goat and other horned animals, put them in water and boil them in fire. The flesh and other things are to be properly kept in a greased vessel and to be closed. In it are to be kept powdered oil-cake of sesamum, honey, boiled beans (māṣa), with their soup, and ghee. There is no fixed proportion of these objects. They are to be kept in a vessel in a lukewarm place for a fortnight (verses 102-5).