Part 5 - Drinking of water at dawn

Almost all the diseases are cured only by a habitual drinking of water, 64 tolas (i.e., 82 ounces in measurement) in weight, a little before sunrise, every day. One who is habituated to such drinking of water lives for at least a hundred years, free from diseases and senility. Much more salubrious is the habit of drinking at the same time, i.e. at dawn, 48 tolals (24 ounces) of water through the nostrils, Sniffing of a little of water, a little before sunrise, is also healthy and beneficial to eye-sight.

Drinking of water, in the way referred to above, should not be resorted to at the time of drinking clarified butter and medicated oil, at the time of healing up of a boil or abscess, at the time of flatulence and inactivity of the stomach, and when suffering from hiccough and diseases due to kapha and vayu.

Those who want to practice drinking of water at dawn, as referred to above, should scrupulously avoid the following (otherwise, the practice would do more harm than good):—meat, milk, leaf vegetables, all sorts of beans and grains, pistakas (puddings), chingri fish (lobster), bilva, betasa (cane creeper), nimba, bidahi food (see page 7), warm food, food fried with oil, physical exercise, fomenting the body, fasting, rubbing or annointing the body with any thing warm, exposure to sun’s rays and fire, using very swift conveyance, and sleeping in daytime.

The following are benefical to such drinkers of water boiled rice washed with water, butter milk, vegetables prescribed on page 4, bathing everyday (twice or thrice in the tropics), cocoa-nut water, roasted fish, and soup of fish.

Those who are vegetarians should take salutary vegetable diet (without grams and beans), cooked with clarified butter.