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Speculations in the Medical Schools [ch. depends on food and drink as well as on the various combinations of vāyu, pitta, kapha and soạita in health and disease. Dalhaņa, in commenting on this, says that, Suśruta's work being principally a treatise on surgery, its author holds that blood with all its impurities plays an important part in producing disturbances in all wounds1. Suśruta further speaks of vāta, pitta and śleşman as the causes of the formation of the body (deha-sambhava-hetavaḥ). The vāta, pitta and kapha, situated in the lower, middle and upper parts of the body, are like three pillars which support the body, and blood also co-operates with them in the same work. Dalhaņa remarks that rāta, pitta and kapha are concomitant causes, working in cooperation with semen and blood?. Susruta further derives vāta from the root vā, to move, pitta from tap, to heat, and śleşman from śliş, to connect together. The Sūtra-sthāna of Susruta compares kapha, pitta and vāyu with the moon (soma), the sun (sūrya) and air (anila) but not with the three gunas, as is found in the supplementary book, called the Uttara-tantra. In discussing the nature of pitta, he says that pitta is the fire in the body and there is no other fire but pitta in the body. Pitta has all the qualities of fire, and so, when it diminishes, articles of food with fiery qualities serve to increase it, and, when it increases, articles of food with cooling properties serve to diminish it. Pitta, according to Susruta, is situated between the stomach (āmāśaya) and the smaller intestines (pakvāśaya), and it cooks all food and drink and separates the chyle on the one hand, and the excreta, urine, etc. on the other. Being situated in the above place, between the stomach and the smaller intestines (tatra-stham eva), by its own power (ātma-śaktyā) it works in other pitta centres of the body and by its heating work (agni-karma) sets up the proper activities at those places. In its function of cooking it is called pācaka, in its function in the liver and spleen, as supplying the colouring matter of blood, it is called “colouring” (rañjaka), in its function in the heart it serves intellectual purposes (sādhaka), in its function in the eyes it is called “perceiving,” or locaka, in its function of giving a glossy appearance to the skin it is called bhrājaka. It is hot, liquid and blue or yellow, possesses bad smell, and after
1 etad dhi salya-tantram, salya-tantre ca vranch pradhāna-bhūtah vrane ca düşyeșu madhye raktasya prādhānyam iti soņitopādānam (ibid.). Suśruta also uses the word dosa to mean pus (püya) (1. 5. 12).
? Susruta, 1.21.3 and 4. Dalhana, commenting on this, writes:" śukrārtavādi sahakāritayā deha-janakā abhipretāḥ.'
