Chapter CCX - Various other Recipes (continued)

O Thou dissipator of woes, take Hastikarna roots, and reduce them to powder. O Thou blissful one, a hundred Palam weight of powdered Hastikarna roots, taken with milk, in the course of a week, will make its user a prodigy of memory and enable him to cope with a lion in prowess and swiftness of motion. Taken with milk, for sixteen days in succession, these powders will impart a ruby-like glow to the complexion of their user and enable him to live for a thousand years. Taken with honey and clarified butter, they tend to increase the duration of life; taken only in combination with honey, these powders make their users extremely endearing to women and enable them to live up for another ten thousand years. Taken with milk curd they impart a thunder-like hardness to the muscles; taken with the expressed juice of Kesharaji, they enable their users to live for a thousand years. By using these powders through the medium of Kanjikam, a man is enabled to live for a century without anywise suffering from the ravages of time. Taken with Triphala, they tend to improve the eye-sight; by taking them through the vehicle of clarified butter even blind persons may regain their sight. A plaster of these powders pasted with buffalo milk and applied to the head imparts a sable colour to the hair; O thou bull-ensigned deity, applications of these powders with oil to the head remove baldness and help a luxurious growth of hair. Rubbing of the body with these powders pasted with oil removes wrinkles of the skin and premature greyness, of the hair, and grants a sort of immunity from disease. These powders pasted with] goat’s milk and applied to the eyes, in the manner of a collyrium, for a month, improve the eye-sight. Gather Palasha seeds in the month of Shravana. Reduce these seeds to powder, with their capsules off, and take this powder for six months, living on a rice and milk regimen, and abjuring the use of water. By taking this powder in the way as prescribed, a man is enabled to live for a thousand years, free from disease and decay. Cull Bhringa-raja roots under the auspices of the asterism Pushya. Take a Vidalapadam weight of this root with barley-wine for thirty days in succession. Thereby a man will be able to live for five hundred years in the possession of an elephant-like strength of the body and free from disease and premature decay, and as a prodigy of memory.