Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/673

Chap.XLVI.] root principles of the body. Instantaneousness, like the expansion of a drop of oil cast into a bowl of water, helps to permeate the whole organism simultaneously with the use of a drug. Subtility is the quality in virtue of which a thing can penetrate into the smallest capillaries and channels of the body. These twenty qualities or virtues have been described as they are.

Now we shall describe the transformations which the food stuffs undergo in the organism. This animated organism is composed of the five fundamental material principles, and the food of a living organic being necessarily partakes of the character of its corporeal components. The food, which consists of live fundamental material principles (elements), is digested, in its turn, by the five elemental heat or fire, and each of its constituent principles goes to augment its own kindred in the human organism.

The food, which is followed by a sweet, digestive reaction, goes to increase the quantity of Pittam, while the one, which is completely digested, contributes towards the augmentation of the bodily Vayu (nerve force). The stool and the urine are the excreted portion of the well-digested food, the lymph chyle is the substance drawn from the well- matured chyle, (as has been described in the chapter on the description of Blood, Chap. XIV. of the present work). The