Preventing Disease

18.1Then the lord said:

“One should blend the root of castor-oil plant with sour gruel, and rub it on the head. This will cure headache.

18.2“One should fill the ear with lukewarm urine of a goat, cow, or human, with added salt. This will cure ear diseases. Alternatively one should place a dried spider into sesame oil.

18.3“One should make a pill from clearing nut, long pepper, emblic myrobalan, turmeric, and sweet flag, mixed with dew water. If one anoints the eyes with it, all eye diseases will be cured. Alternatively one should anoint them with honey and long pepper.

18.4“By applying earwax with honey to the eyes, one will cure night blindness.

18.5“By applying an ointment of clearing nut with honey to the eyes, one will cure all eye diseases. One should blend sesame oil, salt, and the root of doob grass with sour gruel in a metal dish, and recite the mantra. That will cure pain in the eyeballs.

18.6“One should sniff loofah fruit and drink the root of cubeb with rice water. One should also administer a sternutatory. One’s nose will stop bleeding.

18.7“By chewing the root of śephālikā, one will remove uvular swelling.

18.8“With the root of Indian licorice, one will kill worms in one’s teeth.

18.9“One should cook clarified butter and milk, and crab’s feet. Rubbing this on one’s feet will kill the worms in one’s teeth.

18.10“One should grind radish seeds, perfumed cherry, red sandalwood, and costus. Rubbing it in will remove itching and so forth.

18.11“One should drink one pala of a broth from dried deer meat in goat’s milk. This will cure phthisis.

18.12“Eating a dish of buffalo curds and rice porridge will stop dysentery. So will eating a dish of tamarind fruit and rice porridge.

18.13“One should drink two parts of the bark of ivory tree and one part of black pepper, sugar, and Indian heliotrope with buttermilk. This will cure stomach bloat. [F.333.a]

18.14“Eating emblic myrobalan, long pepper, leadwort, and fresh ginger with old sugar, clarified butter, and honey in equal parts, will cure night cough and asthma. So will eating yellow myrobalan with honey.

18.15“Eating porridge of barley with the leaves of cutch tree will cure diseases of the abdomen.

18.16“One should drink fresh ginger and cumin seeds with curds or the scum of boiled rice, together with salt. One will cure urinary infections.

18.17“One should either eat sugar with barley potash in equal parts, or drink an infusion of the root of drumstick tree. Then kidney stones will be passed.

18.18“One should drink yellow myrobalan, leadwort, and fresh ginger, with sour cream. This will cure diseases of the spleen.

18.19“One should eat cumin seeds with sugar. This will cure fever and remove excess wind.

18.20“One should drink barley potash with curds. This will cure constipation and flatulence.

18.21“One should drink lukewarm milk cream having added the three spices, the fruit of false black pepper, and salt. The fire will burn and the parasites will die.

18.22“Eating yellow myrobalan with sugar will cure hemorrhoids. Eating yellow myrobalan with dry ginger will cure constipation and flatulence.

18.23“One should grind doob grass with turmeric and apply it. Then any boils will disappear. With this preparation, one will cure cutaneous eruptions and blisters, swellings caused by dog bites, and so on.

18.24“One should grind the root of negro coffee with sour gruel and drink it. For the same effect, one should drink sugar and white mustard oil. This will cure asthma.

18.25“Eating the bark of arjuna tree together with clarified butter will cure heart palpitations.

18.26“One should roast bel fruit and eat it with sugar. This will cure dysentery.

18.27“Drinking citron juice with sugar will cure aches and pains.

18.28“One should apply an errhine of sugar with dry ginger. Then all the mucus will disappear.

18.29“One should apply an ointment of umbrella tree with honey to the eyes. This will cure all eye diseases.

18.30“One should blend together sour gruel, sesame oil, sea salt, and the root of doob grass [F.333.b] in a metal dish, and apply this to the eyes. This will cure pain in the eyeballs.

18.31“One should eat sugar with clarified butter. This will cure excess wind, bile, and phlegm, as well as leprosy, and other diseases.

18.32“One should eat the powder of the three myrobalan fruits with clarified butter and honey. This will remove all diseases.

18.33“In the evening, one should ingest powdered yellow myrobalan with clarified butter and honey. This will remove excess wind and phlegm.

18.34“One should dry out and pulverize the root, bark, leaf, flower, and fruit of Malabar nut, sweet flag, Indian pennywort, and long pepper, and make them into a pill with salt and honey. One should take it in the evening. This will remove excess wind and phlegm, and one’s voice will become melodious.

18.35“One should prepare a pill of Indian pennywort, sweet flag, dry ginger, long pepper, yellow myrobalan, Malabar nut, and catechu with honey, and eat it. The result will be the same.

18.36“One should eat, in equal parts, ajowan, dry ginger, and yellow myrobalan with salt. This will cure all indigestion.

18.37“One should drink the juice of moonseed with honey to cure diseases causing excess urine within three months.

18.38“One should drink milk and ground long pepper together with clarified butter and honey to cure fever, heart diseases, cough, and so on.

18.39“One should grind the roots of sensitive plants and wild indigo with cold rice porridge, and smear this on a wound. One should also eat the root of moonseed. This will heal bleeding piles.

18.40“One should eat dry ginger with barley potash. This will stimulate appetite.

18.41“One should drink seeds of Indian sesbania with black pepper over the period of three days. This will cure smallpox.

18.42“One should make a crust around one’s head with the three varieties of myrobalan, indigo plant, black earth, false daisy, the seeds of mango tree, the seeds of tamarind tree, rust of iron, and sour gruel. Then the hair should be fumigated and rubbed with bdellium. Finally one should tie the hair and leave it for seven days. Then one’s hair will be dyed red.

18.43“One should cook clarified butter of a cow with peacock’s bile and the juice of false daisy, [F.334.a] and use this as an errhine. After seven days, one’s hair will become red.

18.44“One should prepare an infusion of hogweed and raṇḍa in sixteen parts of water, reducing it by boiling to just one part. Having boiled the water away, one should add powdered white Indian licorice. Then one should cook it with one cup of sesame oil. After applying this to the hair, the hair will become red.

18.45“One should pulverize and blend together bhūmividārī, the three spices, and sulphur. One should place the mixture in the center of a wick. Having turned the burning wick downward, one should gradually take white mustard oil. By applying two drops of this errhine regularly, one will remove wrinkles and gray hair.

18.46“If one applies an ointment of costus together with the liquid essence of the above ingredients, it will alleviate pains.

18.47“One should place in a kiln a lump consisting of one tolaka of quicksilver, sessile joyweed, and purslane, together with one māṣaka of freshly churned butter and ground sulphur‍—this lump should be sealed in a crucible together with some sand. After heating it up, the quicksilver will fuse with the other ingredients. Ingesting this will cure consumption and so on.

18.48“One should obtain the first excrement of a newly born calf and prepare a pill. One should then grind the root of Indian valerian and enclose the pill in it. After eating one pill, one can eat poison without it taking any effect.

18.49“One should grind seeds of black plum, seeds of citron, and seeds of flea tree, and then cook them in goat’s milk. One should eat this preparation with ghee. It will take a fortnight before one feels hungry again.

18.50“Applied with a paste of emblic myrobalan, costus, blue lotus, Indian spikenard, and country mallow, thin hair will become thick.

18.51“One should heat up a dog’s tooth above a smoky fire, add to it milk and clarified butter, and rub it on. Hair will grow even where it doesn’t normally grow.

18.52“One should dip one’s penis, for some time, in coconut juice, and then apply the powder of sūrasūnna. This will cure diseases of the male organ. [F.334.b]

18.53“If one mixes false daisy root with one’s seminal fluid and applies it to the penis during the month of Puṣya, the same thing will happen. Likewise if one mixes the creeper of white Indian oleander with the blood of a lizard and then mixes it with śmathai and false daisy, and applies it to the penis, it will have the same effect.”

18.54This concludes the chapter on preventing diseases, the eighteenth in the glorious Caṇḍa­mahā­roṣaṇa tantra called “The Sole Hero.”