Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/156

52 Sometimes a town or a city is depopulated by a curse, anger, sin, or by a monster or a demoness conjured up by a spell or incantation. Sometimes the pollens of poisonous flowers or grasses, etc., wafted by the winds, invade a town or a village, and produce a sort of epidemic cough, asthma, catarrh, or fever, irrespective of all constitutional peculiarities or deranged bodily humours agitated Towns and villages are known to have been depopulated through malignant astral influences, or through houses, wives*, beds, seats, carriages, riding animals, gems and precious stones assuming inauspicious features.

Prophylactic measures:—In such cases migration to a healthy or unaffected locality, performances of rites of pacification and atonement, (wearing of prophylactic gems and drugs), recitations of mantras, libations of clarified butter cast into the sacrificial fire, offerings to the gods, celebration of sacrificial ceremonies, obeisance with clasped palms to the gods, practice of penances, self-control and charity, kindness, spiritual initiation; obedience to one's elders and preceptors, and devotion to the gods and the Bramhanas, and observance of such like rules of conduct may prove beneficial to the affected community.