Part 3 - Alkaline substance (3): Svarji-kshara (refined natron)

In certain hills or in places adjacent to hills, layers of alkaline soil are to be found in abundance. This soil is called svarji-mrit (natron). It contains alkaline mud with foreign matters. Some quantity of this earth is to be dissolved with four times its weight of water. The solution is next to be distilled for several times through a piece of thick cloth. The solution, thus distilled, is next to he heated and condensed into solid alkaline substance, called svarji-kashara.

Its properties.

Svarji, like java-kshara, has the properties of fire. It is pungent, warm, and acrid. It pacifies kapha, and vayu, and is efficacious in gulma, flatulence of the stomatch, diseases of the belly, boils, worms, asthma, intestinal obstruction, enlargement of the spleen and the liver. It impairs semen.

Artificial svarji-kshara.

In the absense of svarji-kshara, as manufactured in the way stated above, physicians sometimes use, as its substitute, a kshara prepared from the ashes of duralabha or small duralabha.^[1]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The small variety grows in abundance in barren tracts of land, and especially in the Punjab where it is called “lana” (contraction of “lavana”, meaning saltish).