Treatment Of Palita

The expressed juice of the Bhringa-rája and (the decoction of) Triphalá, powders of indigo leaves, Arjuna-bavk, Bhringa-rája, Pinditaka, black-iron, flowers of the Vija and of Saha-chara, Haritaki, Vibhitaka and Amalaka mixed together and pasted with a quantity of mud found adherent to lotus-bulbs weighing as much as the combined weight of the aforesaid drugs should be kept in an iron-pitcher well covered and preserved inside a room for a fortnight. After this period it should be cooked with (an adequate quantity of) oil and with the expressed juice * of the Bhringa rája and (a decoction of) Triphalá, For the purpose of ascertaining the proper cooking of the oil, a (white) feather of a Valáká. (crane) should be dipped into it, and satisfactory preparation should be judged from the deep blue colour imparted to the feather. The oil should be then preserved in a black-iron pitcher for a month. Used as anointments, this oil arrests a premature greyness of the hair. 18.

* Dallana says that this oil should be cooked with cow's urine weighing four times as much as the oil.

The flowers of the S'airiya. Jambu, Arjuna and of the Kas'mari, sesamum, Bhringu-rája-seeds, mango-stones, Punaniavá, † mud, Kantakári, Kásisa, marrow of the seeds of Mariana, Triphalá, powdered iron, Rasánjana, Yashti-madhu, Nilotpala, Sarivá, and Madayanti ‡ should be pasted together with the decoction of the Sára (pith) of the Vijaka. It should then be mixed with seven Prastha measures of the decoction of the Sára of Vijaka and preserved for ten days in a covered iron vessel. This compound should then be carefully cooked with an A'dhaka measure of Vibhitaka-oil and again preserved in a new iron-pitcher for a month. Then after cleansing the system of the patient, the oil thus prepared

should be used as errhines (Nasya) and in anointing the head, and the patient should be advised to live on diet consisting of Másha-pulse, or of Kris'ará. In the course of a month, it imparts a (deep black) gloss like that of a black bee, or that of Rasánjana to the hair and makes it grow thick and curly. It cures baldness, arrests the susceptibility of the system to an attack of premature decay, removes the wrinkles of the face, and invigorates the sense organs in the performance of their proper and respective functions- This oil should not be given to a man who does not wish to use it, nor to an indigent person, to an ungrateful wretch, nor to an enemy. 19.

* In the cases of cooking an oil, the liquid substance to be used, should be, as a general rule, four times as much as the oil; but in this case, the expressed juice of Bhringa-rája and (the decoction of) Triphalá should be continued to be added, so long as the feather does not become deep blue.

† According to Dallana, the reading would have beenTreatment Of Palita 200143 i e , the two kinds of Punarnavá.

‡ One Karsha measure of each of the aforesaid drugs should be taken.