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Mathomathis would like to present an article on Sushruta Samhita | Medical treatment of inflamed ulcers based on the book Sushruta Samhita, volume 4: Cikitsasthana by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna | 1911 | 123,229 words. The article was adopted from the website: https://www.wisdomlib.org/, a detailed explanation is available on the website. The following article is on The diseases affecting the nervous system, which is a continuation from the previous article on Sushruta Samhita | Medical treatment of nervous disorders | Chikitsita Sthana Several authorities group the disease Vata-Rakta under two different sub-heads, such as superficial and deep-seated. But such a classification is arbitrary and unscientific, inasmuch as this disease first manifests itself on the surface (layer of the skin) like Kushtha and gradually invades the deeper tissues of the body. Hence there are no (two) forms of this disease. Causes of Vata-Rakta:— The Vayu of the body is enraged or agitated by such causes as wrestling with a man of superior and uncommon physical strength, etc., while the blood is vitiated by such causes as constant over-eating of edibles which are of difficult digestion and heat-making in their potency or ingestion of food before the digestion of the previous meal. The Vayu thus enraged and agitated enters into the bloodcarrying channels of the body and being obstructed in its passage, becomes mixed with the vitiated blood. The deranged Vayu and the blood thus combine to give rise to a disease characterised by the specific symptoms of each, which is known as Vata-Rakta. The characteristic pain, which at first confines itself to the extremities, gradually extends over the whole body. Premonitory symptoms of Vata-Rakta:— The disease is ushered in with a pricking pain, a burning and an itching sensation (in the affected part), a swelling, roughness and numbness (anesthesia) of the diseased locality, throbbing of the veins, ligaments, nerves and arteries, a weakness in the thighs and sudden appearance of red or brownish circular patches on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, fingers and heels, etc., (A. R.—wrists). If neglected and immoderately treated in its premonitory stages, the disease soon develops its characteristic symptoms in succession, which have been described before; whereas (a lifelong) deformity (of the affected part) is the penalty for neglecting it (in its fully patent or developed stage). Memorable Verse:— Men of a mild and delicate constitution, as well as those who are (inordinately) stout or sedentary in their habits or are addicted to unwholesome and incompatible food, etc., are generally found to be susceptible to an attack of Vata-Rakta. Prognosis:— A physician is advised to take in hand the medical treatment of a Vata-Rakta-patient who has as yet not lost much strength and muscle, nor is afflicted with thirst, fever, epileptic fits, dyspnea, cough, numbness (of the affected part), aversion to food, indigestion, extension and contraction of the limb, as well as of a person who is strong and temperate in his living and can afford to pay for the diet and other necessary accessories of the treatment. Preliminary remedial measures:— In the first stage of the disease the blood, having become vitiated owing to its being obstructed in its course (by the unusually agitated Vayu in the system), should be gradually and not profusely bled, except when the body would be found to have become extremely dry or to have lost its natural healthful glow or complexion through the action of the aggravated morbific principle (Vayu), for fear of further aggravating the Vayu. Emetics, purgatives, and Vasti (enemas), etc., should be administered and the patient should be made to take a diet consisting of old and matured clarified butter (and boiled rice), in the case where the aggravated condition of the deranged Vayu would be found to predominate. As an alternative, he should be made to drink a potion consisting of goat’s milk mixed with half its quantity of oil, with two Tola weight of Yashti-madhu or goat’s milk cooked with Prishniparni (two Tola weight) with honey and sugar (added after cooking), or cooked with Shunthi, Shringataka, and Kasheruka, or cooked with Shyama, Rasna, Sushavi, Prishniparni, Pilu, Shatavari, Shvadamshtra and Dasha-mula. Oil, cooked with the addition of milk previously boiled with the decoction of Dasha-mula of eight times its own weight and a Kalka of Madhuka, Mesha-shringi (A. R. Sharngashta), Shvadamshira, Sarala, Bhadra-daru, Vaca and Surabhi pasted together, should be administered in drinks, etc, (viz, anointment, sprinkling, etc.). As an alternative, the oil cooked with the decoction of Shatavari, Mayuraka, Madhuka, Kshira-Vidari, Vala, Ati-vala and Trina-panca-mula, with the paste of the drugs belonging to the Kakolyadi group, or the oil cooked with the decoction and a Kalka of Vala for a hundred times should be prescribed for the patient. The affected part should be washed with the milk, boiled with the roots of the Vata-hara (Vayu-subduing) drugs (i.e., Dasha-mula), or simply with Amla (gruel, etc.), or a plaster composed of barley, Madhuka, Eranda (castor) and Varshabhu (pasted together and heated), should be applied to the part Plasters, etc.:— Barley, wheat, sesamum, Mudga pulse aud Masha pulse should be taken in equal parts and pounded separately; and the paste of the following drugs, viz., Kakoli, Kshira-kakoli, Jivaka, Rishabhaka, Vala, Ati-vala, Visa-mrinala (lotus stem), Prishniparni, Mesha-shringi, Piyala, Sharkara (sugar), Kasheruka, Surabhi, and Vaca should be mixed with each of the preceding powders and each of these compounds (so formed) should be boiled with milk, oil, lard, marrow and clarified butter. The five compounds, thus prepared, are called Payasas, which should be applied as a hot poultice (Upanaha) to the affected part; or an Utkarika, made of the pulp of oily fruit (seeds) (prepared by cooking them with milk) should be applied; or powders of wheat, barley, sesamum, Mudga pulse, or Masha pulse, and Veshavara, made of various kinds of fish and flesh, should be used as a plaster. Vilvapeshika, Tagara, Deva-daru, Sarala, Rasna, Harenu, Kushtha, Shata-pushpa, Ela, Sura and cream of milk-curd pasted together, should be applied to the affected part as […]
Mathomathis would like to present an article on Sushruta Samhita | Medical treatment of inflamed ulcers based on the book Sushruta Samhita, volume 4: Cikitsasthana by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna | 1911 | 123,229 words. The article was adopted from the website: https://www.wisdomlib.org/, a detailed explanation is available on the website. Metrical Text:— In the days of yore the gods such as Brahma, etc created a kind of Amrita ambrosia) which is known by the epithet of Soma, for the prevention of death and decay of the body. The one and the same divine Soma plant may be classified into twenty-four species according to the difference of their habitats, structures, epithets and potencies. They are as follows:— Amshuman Munjavan Candramah Rajataprabha Durua Soma Kaniyan Shvetaksha Kanakaprabha Pratanavan Tala vrinta Karavira Amshavan Svayani-prabha Maha-soma Garudahrita Gayatrya Traishtubha Pamkta Jagata Shamkara Agnishtoma Raivata Yathokta and Udupati. All these kinds of Soma secure for the user a mastery of the Gayatri (and hence in the Vedas), and are known by the above auspicious names mentioned in the Vedas Their virtues and methods of using them are identical with each other and are described below. Mode of using the Soma:— A room or an inner chamber (agara) in a commendable site protected with three walls on each side and provided with all kinds of accessories and attendants, should be first secured before taking (the expressed juice of) any of the aforesaid Soma plants. Then at an auspicious hour on an auspicious day marked by favorable astral combinations and lunar phase, the person desirous of using the Soma should enter the inner or central Chamber after having had his system cleansed (with the proper emetics, purgatives, etc) and having had his diet in the proper order (of Peya, etc.). A (whole) plant of the Amshuman (or of any other kind of) Soma should be procured in the manner to be observed at the time of collecting the Soma for an (Agni-shtoma) sacrifice and (all) the (preliminary) rites of Homa should be performed (in the usual orthodox way). After that the bulb (of the Soma plant) should be pricked with a golden needle and a quantity of the secreted milky exudation should be collected in a golden vessel. The patient (with the auspicious rites of protection, etc., done unto him) should drink off an Anjali (Kudava) measure of the secreted juice at a draught without tasting it, and the remainder, if any, should be cast into water. He should then wash and rinse his mouth with water in the manner of Achamana. Then having controlled his mind and speech with the vows of Yama (paramount duties) and Niyama (minor duties) should stay in the protected inner chamber surrounded by his friends. Metrical Text:— After having drunk the Rasayana (Elixir) one should reside in a windless (prescribed) chamber, spend his time in perfect control over his senses, sitting, standing or walking about in his chamber in a holy spirit and by no means indulging in sleep (which is injurious under the circumstances). Or the patient may, after taking his meal in the evening and hearing the benedictory words, lie down on a mattress of Kusha-grass covered with black-deer skin and thus pass the night among his friends and may take cold water when thirsty. Then having got out of his bed in the morning he should hear the benedictory words recited and have the benedictory rites performed unto him. He should then touch the body of a cow and sit down in the same manner (in his chamber). Vomitings mark the digestion of the Soma-juice and after vomiting the blood-streaked worm-infested matter, milk boiled and cooled should be given him in the evening. Worm-infested stools follow on the third day (of its use) which help the system in purging off all filth and obnoxious matter (accumulated in the organism) through errors in diet and conduct, etc. The patient should in that case bathe in the evening and take cold boiled milk as before and lie down on a piece of Kshauma cloth stretched over (the aforesaid mattress). Swellings appear on the body on the fourth day (of its use) and worms are found to creep out from all parts of the body. The patient should He down that day on a bed strewn over with dust and in the evening, he should be made to drink a potion of milk as before. He should pass the fifth and sixth day in the same manner, but milk should be given him in the morning and in the evening (instead of only in the evening). The muscles become withered by this time and on the seventh day the patient is found to be a mere skeleton covered with a skin only and left with bare animation, the vital spark being retained by the potency of Soma. The body should be washed with tepid milk on that day and plastered with a paste of sesamum, Yashti- madhu and sandal wood, and milk (only) should be given him to drink. On the morning of the eighth day, the body should be washed with milk, and plastered with sandal paste, and potions of milk should be prescribed for him after which the patient should be advised to leave his bed of dust and lie down on one covered with a piece of Kshauma cloth. From now the muscles of the body begin to show signs of fresh and vigorous growth, the skin becomes cracked, and the teeth, nails and hair begin to fall off. On and from the ninth day the medicinal oil known as Anu-Taila should be used to anoint (the body) and the decoction of Soma-valka for bathing (Pari sheka). The same should be prescribed on the tenth day, and from thence the skin becomes firm. The eleventh and twelfth day should be passed in the same way. From the thirteenth till the sixteenth day (both the days inclusive) the body should be washed with the decoction of Soma-valka. […]
Mathomathis would like to present article on Indian Astronomy | Astronomical Dating of Events | 101 by the author Kosla Vepa Published by Indic Studies Foundation, 948 Happy Valley Rd., Pleasanton, Ca 94566, USA. Their website can be located Indicstudies.us. The studies is also conducted by N.S. Rajaram PhD. Author’s in the volume 1 of thier research start their discussion on a topic called Why are History and the Chronology Important by Kosla Vepa PhD It is taken as largely axiomatic in the study of the History of the Indic peoples, that the civilization that remains extant has been brought into the area by migrating races such as the Aryans, and in fact some would argue, that such a statement holds also for the so called Dravidians of India. According to such a narrative everything that was worth preserving has been handed down to us over the centuries by migrations, within the last 3 1/2 millennia, into the subcontinent, from somewhere else. It is also true that the history that is taught the children of India today is vastly at variance with the puranic accounts handed down to us over several millennia. It is to state it without any embellishments, a revised history that is completely at odds with the traditional history of India. Even so great an effort as the History and Culture of the Indian people edited by RC Majumdar, the most famous of Indian historians at the time of Independence accepts the basic framework, the steel frame, of the History of India as revised by the British colonialists. Fifty years after independence the narrative has not changed and the banner of the colonial version of history is now borne by the Indian left including the Communists and the large part of the Indian political establishment that espouses the Indian version of a political dogma encompassed in the general rubric of Secularism. It is not our contention that History should never be revised, but it should certainly never be done peremptorily at the behest of an invader, simply because the colonial power deems it to be so. Every change that the colonial power has wrought and most of these as can be seen from the table below was introduced by the erstwhile colonial power should be examined for motive and authenticity. Table below describes the inconsistencies in the current narrative of Indian history The inherent contradictions of the Aryan Invasion Theory by the mythic and yet to be identified Aryan race The insistence on clinging to a racial terminology even when it is widely discredited and abandoned elsewhere The insistence that Indic astronomy , geometry and mathematics was not autochthonous to India but was borrowed from the Greek or the Babylonians, without any evidence The origin of the Brahmi script becomes a victim of the ‘anywhere but India’ syndrome Devaluation and denigration of the extent of the ancient Indic contribution to Mathematics and Astronomy Dating of the Mahabharata Dating of the Satapatha Brahmana Dating of the Veda Dating of the Vedanga Jyotish Dating of the Sulva sutras Beginning of the Vikrama era Dating of the Buddha Dating of the Arthasastra Dating of Chandragupta Maurya Dating of Panini’s Ashtadhyayi and consequentially the dating of Panini himself Dating of Aryabhata There are resulting inconsistencies in the chronology of the Indic historical narrative, which is now horribly mangled to fit the straightjacket of British assumptions A substantial percentage of Indians now feel they have a stake in the preservation of this false history and when confronted with the reality of their acquiescence to a false and revised history of their own land by a very recent arrival on the scene, react with irrelevant responses such as “why blame the British” (the issue is not one of blame, and the issue is not about Britain or the British, for after all we are in great admiration of the British for the extraordinary sagacity they displayed in prolonging their imperial rule by every artifice imaginable). We have also dealt with the systematic approach that the British used to remake the weltanschuung of the Indic and to create an international image of the Indic that is much at variance with reality, and the success they achieved in the resulting internalization of these views by the Indic himself in our essay titled The South Asia File. Author’s objective in this seminar is not to recite a litany of grievances against the Occidental (rhymes with oriental) but to give a philosophical underpinning to the long and steady evolution of the Indic civilization it breadth and what is indeed remarkable its staying power. The other great civilizations have either altered significantly or been driven extinct. There is very little left of the Greek civilization (although the west fancies itself the successor to the Greco Roman civilization. The ancient Greeks would be considered Pagans by the established churches today, and hardly any of their life style remains. It is also important to remember that most of the Greek savants were natives of Asia Minor and their life style was more akin to that of Persia than that of France or England, neither of which were pretty far along the Civilization curve, in any event, during that period of history. Importance of Chronology The Indic civilization is for all intents and purposes the only one, amongst the ancients, surviving virtually intact. The Gayatri mantra and the invoking of Savitur are at least 7000 years old. It already asks for enlightenment and not for bread, because they had mastered agriculture and had no problem with adequate food. People (west of the Urals) wonder what happened to the Indus Valley civilization. Nothing dramatic happened they just moved on and their descendants became the Gujaratis, Maharashtrians and other residents of modern India. It is this unbroken continuity that rankles with the Occidental, because he is all too conscious that his own history is replete with wars (e.g. the hundred year’s war between England and France), extinct civilizations, and destruction. Hence, his […]
Hindu Scriptures & Sanskrit Literature | Mathomathis would like to present an article on Root By Kadambi Srinivasan | Published by | Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams | Tirupati 2019. The following article would focus on Hindu Scriptures & Sanskrit Literature. Three religions are regarded as the oldest having come down to us from prehistoric times. They are Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Sanskrit, as defined by Panini, is the classical Sanskrit which evolved from the earlier Vedic Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas consisting of Samhitas, Brahmanas and Upanishads. The metrical hymns of the Rig Veda Samhita are regarded as the earliest composed by man. Prof. Max Muller while recording the first voice on a Gramophone chose the first Sloka of Rig Veda “Agni Meele Purohitam”. He proceeded to explain the reason for his choice – “Vedas are the oldest text of the human race. And Agni Meele Purohitam is the first verse of Rig Veda. In the most primordial time, when the people did not know how even to cover their bodies and lived by hunting and housed in caves, Indians had attained high civilization and they gave the world universal philosophies in the form of the Vedas.” There are two important aspects about the Vedas – (a) Hindus regard that the Vedas have been received through revelation. It was not written by any man (Apaurusheya); and (b) The Vedas are without a beginning and end. How is it possible? Swami Vivekananda explains. “By the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons at different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them”. The name given to the discoverers of these laws was” Kavi”. The Vedas described them as kavayah satyasrutah meaning seers who were the hearers of the truth. The Veda itself was called Shruti meaning revealed scripture. The sage who had a direct intuitional perception is called Sakshath Krutha Rishi. The sage who heard it from his Guru and remembered it is called Shrutha Rishi. Veda have been divided into Karma Kanda (section of works and rituals) and Jnana Kanda (section of knowledge) the former associated with the hymns and the later with the Upanishads. European scholars took up the ritualistic tradition and went on to make their own etymological explanation of the words resulting in arbitrary meaning for Vedic verses. In fact, what they were looking for in Veda was the early history of India, its society, institutions – in short a picture of the times. They then invented the theory (based on the difference of languages) of an Aryan invasion from the north, and an invasion of the Dravidian India. The Indians themselves had no memory of such invasions and there were no records of such events in their classical literature. Yet, this appears to have persuaded the minds of some Indians in favour of this view. All this resulted in a chaos and a mutilation of dates of historical events. As Aurobindo puts it “the Vedic religion was on this account only a worship of Nature-Gods full of solar myths and consecrated sacrifices and a sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and it is barbaric prayers that are the much vaunted, haloed and apotheosized Veda”. And we were left to trace our civilization and ancestors from among the ruins at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. In recent years, Indian scholars have started work on the scientific dating of various events described in our Puranas. The Rishis, the poet seers of Veda, were men with a great spiritual and occult knowledge not shared by ordinary men. Among this enlightened group, there are a number of Rishikas (female Rishis) as well. Still the task is unfinished. To be revealed is one thing, to preserve it and pass it on is quite another thing. The mantras acquire their powers by virtue of their acoustic energy of the syllables (Shabda). In addition, correct sequence of words, purity of the language, exact pronunciation of the words, precise stress on syllables, measured pause between syllables, appropriate tone, accent, modulation and pitch of recitation, proper breath control etc are very critical. In the case of written texts comparisons may be carried out much more easily. How can you devise a system to control the requirements of Vedic texts? In addition the requirement for memorising the entire Vedic texts existed. The Ashrams of the Rishis served as the learning centres and they were located in forests. And maintaining large libraries was impracticable. Oral Tradition Systems have been devised to meet this challenge. It is astounding that large volumes of Vedic texts were preserved by oral tradition for over thousands of years, safeguarding their purity and entirety. Svaadhyaya, the oral tradition, by which Vedas have been preserved, emphasizes the preservation of actual sound of the Vedas over their meaning and interpretation! Careful thought and planning have gone into devising methods to achieve the desired results. Oral methods have been around in other parts of the world as well but rarely has any other oral tradition been so venerated and so well preserved as the Vedic tradition. Rishi Veda Vyasa categorised and compiled four Vedas so that they are more amenable to study and memorise. The task of preserving and perpetuating each branch of Veda in its entirety and purity was assigned to a specified Shakha (branch). The followers of each Shakha, identified as Shakhins of that particular Vedic school, were responsible for preserving their assigned part of Veda. Followers of each Shakha would learn and preserve one of the four Samhitas along with their associated Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishads and the Sutras such as Grihya Sutra […]
Year 1985 – The AI Magazine Mathomathis would like to present an article on: Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence by Rick Brigs | RIACS, NASA Ames Research Centeu, Moffet Field, California 94305. In the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural languages to make them accessible to computer processing These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages arc unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor. But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost more than 5000+ years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old First, a typical Knowledge Representation Scheme (using Semantic Nets) will be laid out, followed by an outline of the method used by the ancient Indian Grammarians to analyze sentences unambiguously. Finally, the clear parallelism between the two will be demonstrated, and the theoretical implications of this equivalence will be given. For the sake of comparison, a brief overview of semantic nets will be given, and examples will be included that will be compared to the Indian approach. After early attempts at machine translation (which were based to a large extent on simple dictionary look-up) failed in their effort to teach a computer to understand natural language, work in AI turned to Knowledge Representation. Since translation is not simply a map from lexical item to lexical item, and since ambiguity is inherent in a large number of utterances, some means is required to encode what the actual meaning of a sentence is. Clearly, there must be a representation of meaning independent of words used. Another problem is the interference of syntax. In some sentences (for example active/passive) syntax is, for all intents and purposes, independent of meaning. Here one would like to eliminate considerations of syntax. In other sentences the syntax contributes to the meaning and here one wishes to extract it. Author considers a “prototypical” semantic net system similar to that of Lindsay, Norman, and Rumelhart in the hopes that it is fairly representative of basic semantic net theory. Taking a simple example first, one would represent “John gave the ball to Mary” as in Figure 1. Here five nodes connected by four labeled arcs capture the entire meaning of the sentence. This information can be stored as a series of “triples”: give, agent, John give, object, ball give, recipient, Mary give, time, past. Note that grammatical information has been transformed into an arc and a node (past tense). A more complicated example will illustrate embedded sentences and changes of state: “John told Mary that the train moved out of the station at 3 o’clock.” As shown in Figure 2, there was a change in state in which the train moved to some unspecified location from the station. It went to the former at 3:00 and from the latter at 3:O0. Now one can routinely convert the net to triples as before. The verb is given central significance in this scheme and is considered the focus and distinguishing aspect of the sentence. However, there are other sentence types which differ fundamentally from the above examples. Figure 3 illustrates a sentence that is one of “state” rather than of “event .” Other nets could represent statements of time, location or more complicated structures. A verb, say, “give,” has been taken as primitive, but what is the meaning of “give” itself? Is it only definable in terms of the structure it generates? Clearly two verbs can generate the same structure. One can take a set-theoretic approach and a particular give as an element of “giving events” itself a subset of ALL-EVENTS. An example of this approach is given in Figure 4 (“John, a programmer living at Maple St., gives a book to Mary, who is a lawyer”). If one were to “read” this semantic net, one would have a very long text of awkward English: “There is a John” who is an element of the “Persons” set and who is the person who lives at ADR1, where ADR1 is a subset of ADDRESS-EVENTS, itself a subset of ‘ALL EVENTS’, and has location ‘37 Maple St.‘, an element of Addresses; and who is a “worker” of ‘occupation 1’. . .etc.” The degree to which a semantic net (or any unambiguous, nonsyntactic representation) is cumbersome and odd-sounding in a natural language is the degree to which that language is “natural” and deviates from the precise or “artificial.” As we shall see, there was a language spoken among an ancient scientific community that has a deviation of zero. The hierarchical structure of the above net and the explicit descriptions of set-relations are essential to really capture the meaning of the sentence and to facilitate inference. It is believed by most in the AI and general linguistic community that natural languages do not make such seemingly trivial hierarchies explicit. Below is a description of a natural language, Shastric Sanskrit, where for the past millenia successful attempts have been made to encode such information. Shastric Sanskrit The sentence: (1) “Caitra goes […]