Charaka-Samhita — trans. Kaviraj Avinash Chandra Kaviratna

The soil (of a region), again, should be known as baneful when, as regards its nature, it has become foul in colour, scent, taste, and touch ; full ol impurities, afflicted by reptiles, and wild beasts, and gnats, and insects (such as locusts and other leaf-eating ones), and flies, and mice, and owls, and such vultures and jackals and other animals as live in crematoria (or subsist on carrion) ; when it abounds with high grass and saccharum cylindricum and bushes, teems with creepers of every kind, full of abandoned (uncultivated) fields, and is disfigured with dried up and lost crops ; when its atmosphere has become smoky ; when it resounds continually with the cries of birds and barking of dogs ; when agitated animals in crowds and birds in flocks are seen to run and fly over it in different directions ; when its cities and towns and villages have abandoned, or become reft of, piety, truth, modesty, established usages, good conduct, and other merits j when its receptacles of water are con¬ tinually agitated ; when meteors and thunderbolts are constantly seen to fall and earth-quakes are frequent ; when it constantly echoes with loud noises ; when the sun, the moon, and the stars, are frequently covered by masses of clouds that are dry or coppery or red or white ; when the inhabitants are always agitated by anxiety or fear, and when cries of grief seem to come from every side ; when a darkness seems to overspread the whole area when night-wanderers and ghosts seem to stalk over every place and when cries and loud noises of various kinds seem to come from every direction.8*

As regards Time, that should be known as baneful which dis¬ covers symptoms contrary to those which properly belong to the season (that is running), or symptoms that are aggravated or attenuated in comparison thereto.8

They that are possessed of knowledge and experience say that these four, when existing with such conditions, become destructive of cities and towns and villages.

* The curious reader should compare this passage with the description given, in the Mahabharata, of the omens and prognostications that were noti¬ ceable in Dwaraka immediately before the carnage of the Yadavas, the Andhakas, and the Vrishnis, on the field of Prabhasa. The Mussulmanhistorians also have recorded many similar phenomena in Bagdad and the

CHARAkA-SA MBIT A.

p. 475

When these four are otherwise, they are said to be beneficial.1’ Even when these four become invested with perverse virtues and (thereby) destructive of cities and towns and villages, if the inhabitants be treated with proper medicines, no cause of fear from disease need exist.11

Here occur some verses.

Among these four, viz ., Place, Time, Atmosphere, and Water, when they have all become perverted, explanations are subjoined as to which is more potent than which and for what reasons.1®

Guided by the consideration of unavoidability, one conversant with the topic should hold that Water is a more potent cause than Air ; Place a more potent cause than Water ; and Time a more potent cause than Place, by nature.18*

One endued with especial knowledge should regard that one among the evils, as mentioned above, in air and the rest, as lighter (than the others) of which the remedy is easier.14t

Even if all the four ending with Time become vitiated, still if men be treated with (proper) medicines, they are not likely to be afflicted.15 country surrounding it a little before the destruction of that great city by the Moguls under Houlagu Khan. — T.

* Both the vernacular translators have misunderstood this verse. The sense, however, is plain. Chakrapani explains it with considerable wealth of illustration. Water is regarded as a more potent cause than air ; for air, if vitiated, may be avoided by one living in a proper house or a proper spot, such as a hill or a mountain, taking care, again, to purify it by burning incense and other scents. Place is a more potent cause than water ; for Water, if vitiated, may be avoided by one drinking only the liquid found within such fruits as cocoanuts, — or beer, or soda-water, or lemonade, to adopt illus¬ trations from modern times. Then Time is a more potent cause than Place, for one may avoid a place by leaving it and going to another ; but Time, meaning season, is such that no one can avoid it.

Wherever one may go or however one may live, one cannot rise superior to Time. — T.

t What the Rishi says here is not different from what has been said in the previous verse. Only, the same proposition is laid down from a different .; point of view. — T.

p. 476

caaraka-samhitA.

Of men not subject to death as their common fate dr not characterised by commonness of acts, medicine consisting of the five operations is said to be the highest remedy;16*

In such cases the due administration of Rasdyanai is highly spoken of, as also the support of the body, with the aid of the medicinal plants culled beforehand.17