Anjana in the Sushruta Samhita: Ayurveda's Classical Collyrium (Kajal) and Its Three Types — Lekhana, Ropana and Prasadana

📖 30 min read · By Ayurveda Hub

Anjana: From the Vaidya's Collyrium to the Household Kajal

Of all the meeting points between classical Ayurvedic medicine and everyday Indian life, few are as intimate as the little pot of kajal. The soft black paste applied along the rim of the eye is one of the oldest continuous cosmetic and folk-medical customs in the subcontinent, and behind it stands a whole scholarly discipline. The Sanskrit word is Anjana — from a root meaning “to smear” or “to anoint” — and in the classical texts it does not mean the cosmetic at all, but a precise, medicated application placed inside the lids of the eye by a physician for a defined purpose. The household kajal is its distant, simplified descendant; the Anjana of the Sushruta Samhita is the thing itself, worked out with the seriousness the old surgeons brought to everything they touched.

What makes the classical treatment worth reading today is not any promise — this article prescribes nothing, and warns against all self-application — but the sheer care of it. Where a casual eye sees only “black eye-paste,” the Sushruta Samhita saw three entirely different medicines, each with its own taste, its own base, its own dose and its own moment of use; a graded series of applicator rods; a step-by-step method; and a long, sober list of the situations in which Anjana must never be used at all. It is the same refusal to generalise — the same instinct that runs through the classical readings of the diseases of the eye — that is Ayurveda's diagnostic signature, and it is on full display here in the section the old text calls the Kriya-Kalpa, the “operative measures” for the eye.

One honest word before we begin about what this article is and is not. It is a piece of history and heritage: a walk through how a great classical surgical text organised the outer treatments of the eye. It is emphatically not a manual, a recipe, or a suggestion that any of this be attempted. The eye is among the most delicate organs of the body; putting anything into it that a doctor has not prescribed can do real harm. Everything below describes the belief and practice of the old texts, offered for interest and cultural richness — and paired, wherever it matters, with the plain modern counsel that eyes are a matter for a qualified doctor.

Kriya-Kalpa Vijnaniya: The Eye Chapter of Sushruta's Uttara Tantra

The Sushruta Samhita, the founding text of Indian surgery, closes with a long final section called the Uttara Tantra, the “later teaching,” which gathers the specialist subjects — and its opening stretch is a complete classical ophthalmology, the Salakya Tantra, the science of the diseases “above the collar-bone.” It is here that the text famously enumerates its seventy-six diseases of the eye and describes their surgery, including the celebrated couching of the cataract. We have walked much of that ground already: the classical anatomy and causes of eye disease, the forty-one diseases of the eye by region, the inflammations Abhishyanda and Adhimantha, the gradual blindness Timira, the eye surgeries for Arma and the extraordinary cataract-couching operation.

After the diseases and their surgery comes the chapter on how the eye was tended — the Kriya-Kalpa Vijnaniya, the eighteenth chapter in this arrangement of the Uttara Tantra, in which Dhanvantari sets out for his pupil the operative measures of eye-care. The tradition organises these into a set of outer therapies applied to the eye and its surroundings: Tarpana (a nourishing ghee-bath held over the eye within a wall of dough), Puta-paka (a stronger extract prepared by roasting), Aschyotana (medicated eye-drops), Seka (a stream or irrigation), and Anjana (the collyrium). To these the chapter adds Siro-vasti, an oil-retention bath for the whole head. We gave the overview of the five measures, with Tarpana at its centre, in the guide to the Netra Kriya-Kalpa; this article goes deep into the one measure that became a household word — Anjana.

The readings here are drawn from the eighteenth chapter of the Uttara Tantra of the Sushruta Samhita — the Kriya-Kalpa Vijnaniya, the classical account of how the eye was tended

Before it turns to the collyrium itself, the chapter is careful to teach the physician how to read the eye's response to any of these measures — the language of Samyak (satisfactory), Ayoga (deficient) and Atiyoga (excessive) application. Of a properly applied Puta-paka, the text says, the signs are “freshness and clearness of the colour of the cornea, capability of the organ to bear heat, light and wind, refreshing sleep and an unembarrassed gladsome wakening and a lightness of the organ” (Uttara Tantra, 18.18). Too much brings “darkness of vision, pain and swelling” and eruptions; too little leaves the deranged Dosha unrelieved. This grammar of just-enough, too-much and too-little runs through the whole of the Kriya-Kalpa, and it is the mark of a genuinely clinical mind: the measure is never the point — the eye's response is.

Puta-paka, Aschyotana and Seka: Preparing and Pouring the Eye Remedies

To understand where Anjana sits, it helps to see the sister measures around it, because the chapter describes them with a craftsman's exactness. Consider the Puta-paka, the roasted extract. The Sushruta Samhita gives the recipe like a cook: “Two Vilva measures of cleansed and pasted meat, one Pala measure of the medicinal drugs pasted together and one Kudava (half a seer) measure of liquid ingredients should be mixed together and made into a ball, well covered with the leaves of Kadali, Kasmari, Eranda, Kumuda or of Padma plant” (Uttara Tantra, 18.18). The wrapped ball is then coated with clay and roasted in a fire of catechu-wood or dried cow-dung cakes; when cooked, it is broken open and its fluid squeezed out and applied to the eye in the manner of a Tarpana. It is a small manufacturing process, described so that any trained hand could reproduce it.

The mode of application that follows is just as precise, and it turns on the doshas. “The patient being laid on his back,” the fluid extract “should be dropped cold into the Kaninika (cornea) of the eye in cases of derangement of the blood and the Pitta; it should be used lukewarm when the Vayu and the Kapha would be found to have been aggravated” (Uttara Tantra, 18.19). Cold for the hot humours, warm for the cold ones: the same logic Ayurveda applies everywhere, here brought down to the temperature of a single drop. The affected eye is to be gently fomented first, with a cloth soaked in hot water and wrung out, and in a stubborn Kapha case fumigation follows at the end.

Aschyotana (the instilled eye-drop) and Seka (the poured stream or irrigation) are the gentlest and most everyday of the measures, and the text divides each into three classes by purpose, in a scheme that maps neatly onto the three Anjana we are coming to. There is a Lekhana form for “scraping” the eye, a Snehana form for lubricating it, and a Ropana form for setting up healing in a sore. The dose is graded to match: “Seven or eight drops of the medicinal fluid should be used in Lekhana-Aschyotana... ten drops in the Snehana (for emulsive purposes) and twelve drops in the Ropana” (Uttara Tantra, 18.22). Seven drops to scrape, ten to soothe, twelve to heal — the ancient pharmacist counted them out.

The sister measures of the Kriya-Kalpa: the leaf-wrapped, clay-coated ball roasted for a Puta-paka extract; the counted drops of Aschyotana and Seka; and the dough-walled ghee-pool of Tarpana — each a small, exact procedure of the old eye-clinic

These, then, are the neighbours of the collyrium: the nourishing bath, the roasted extract, the counted drops, the poured stream. Each was a defined clinical act, timed to the season and the hour and titrated to the eye's response. They are described here so that the Anjana, when we reach it, is seen for what it was — not a cosmetic, but the most concentrated member of a whole family of medicated eye-measures.

Siro-vasti: The Head-Oil Bath for the Diseases of the Head

Set among the eye-measures is a therapy for the whole head that has never quite left the Ayurvedic repertoire: Siro-vasti, literally a “retention (Vasti) at the head (Siras).” The Sushruta Samhita introduces it for “the serious diseases peculiar to the head,” which it says “readily yield to and are conquered by the application of Siro-vasti,” producing the very good effects known as the Murdha-tailika ones (Uttara Tantra, 18.24). It is the grandest of the classical oil-therapies for the head, and its description is unforgettable.

“The patient having been treated with purgatives and emetics (according to requirements) should be given a proper diet according to the nature of the disease, and made to sit erect in the evening, when an animal bladder (the bladder of a goat being usually used for the purpose) filled with the proper Sneha should be placed on his crown and firmly tied up with a bandage. The Sneha-filled bladder should be so retained on the head ten times as long as is necessary for a Tarpana measure, according to the nature of the disease” (Uttara Tantra, 18.24–25). A warm, oil-filled leather band sealed around the crown, holding a pool of medicated oil against the head for a long, measured interval: this is the direct ancestor of the Shirobasti still offered in Panchakarma clinics today, and a cousin of the more familiar oil-therapies the classics loved — the head-anointing and the whole-body Abhyanga (oil massage) that anchors the classical daily routine (Dinacharya).

Siro-vasti: a warm, oil-filled band sealed around the crown, holding medicated oil against the head for a long measured interval — the classical ancestor of the Shirobasti still offered in Panchakarma today, shown here purely as heritage

It belongs in this chapter because the classical physicians thought of the head, the eyes, the ears and the nose as one connected territory — the region “above the collar-bone” that the Salakya specialist governed — and because oil steadily applied to the head was believed to nourish and calm the whole of it. As with everything here, we meet Siro-vasti as history: a striking classical procedure, performed by trained hands, not a home practice.

The Three Anjana: Lekhana, Ropana and Prasadana

Now to the heart of the chapter. “Proper Anjana for Lekhana (scraping), Ropana (healing), or Prasadana (invigorating) purposes,” the Sushruta Samhita says, “should be applied after the cleansing of the system in cases where the deranged bodily Doshas would manifest themselves in the region of the eye only” (Uttara Tantra, 18.26). In that single sentence the text sorts the whole world of collyrium into three medicines with three jobs — and the distinction, once you have it, is beautifully clear.

The Lekhana-Anjana is the scraping collyrium, the strongest of the three. It “should be prepared with the drugs of one or more tastes (Rasa) except the sweet one,” the text specifies — that is, from pungent, bitter, astringent, sour or saline substances, never sweet (Uttara Tantra, 18.27). Its purpose is to clear away accumulated matter: “The Dosha accumulated in the regions of the eye and the eye-lids, in the ball, the passages, and in the capillaries of the eye, as well as in the gristle of the nose, would be secreted through the mouth, the nostrils and the corners of the eyes by the application of a Lekhana Anjana.” It is the collyrium of active clearing — sharp, non-sweet, and used to make the eye discharge what the physician judged to be clogging it.

The Ropana-Anjana is the healing collyrium. It “should be prepared with the drugs of bitter and astringent tastes (Rasa) mixed with (a little quantity of) clarified butter and is good for healing purposes” (Uttara Tantra, 18.28). The addition of ghee is the key: “Owing to the presence of the Sneha, it is cooling in its effect and consequently gives natural colour and vigour to the eye.” Where the Lekhana scrapes, the Ropana closes and cools — the collyrium a physician would reach for over a healing sore.

The three Anjana of the Sushruta Samhita: the sharp, non-sweet Lekhana that scrapes; the ghee-softened, cooling Ropana that heals; and the sweet, oily Prasadana that the text says imparts tone and vigour. Three medicines, three purposes — shown here as classical scholarship, not as anything to prepare or use

The Prasadana-Anjana is the soothing, clarifying collyrium, the gentlest of the three. It is “prepared with the drugs of sweet taste and with (a profuse quantity of) Sneha,” and, the text says, “imparts tone and vigour to the eye-sight and should be used with advantage for all soothing purposes connected with the organ” (Uttara Tantra, 18.28). Sweet and richly oily where the Lekhana was sharp and dry, it was the collyrium of comfort and clarity. (Every such classical statement about what a collyrium “does” is, of course, the belief of the old text, recorded here as heritage — not a claim we make and not something any modern product does.)

The three even carry their own logic of when to be used, tied to the doshas and the times of day. The application “should be made in the morning, evening or in the night in accordance with the nature of the deranged bodily Dosha” (Uttara Tantra, 18.30) — a Kapha-scraping Lekhana in the morning, a Pitta-and-blood measure at noon, a Vata measure in the evening, and so on through the commentators' refinements. It is the same tridosha reasoning that governs the rest of Ayurveda, brought to a fine point at the rim of the eye.

Varti, Rasa-kriya and Churna: The Forms and Doses of Anjana

Having sorted Anjana by purpose, the chapter sorts it by form — the physical shape in which the medicine was made up. “The forms in which an Anjana may be,” the text says, “are those of pills, liquid (Rasa-kriya) and powder, each succeeding one being more efficacious than the one preceding it, in the order of enumeration” (Uttara Tantra, 18.31). So there were three preparations: the Varti, a solid pencil or pill of the medicine to be rubbed down; the Rasa-kriya, a thickened liquid or extract; and the Churna, a fine powder — with the powder reckoned the most potent, the pill the mildest, and the liquid between. The commentator Dallana adds the clinical rule of thumb: pill, liquid and powder for “mild, intermediate and severe attacks respectively.”

The doses are given with the same care, measured against a humble reference — the Kalaya, a common pulse (a pea or similar). For the pill: “The size (dose) of a Lekhana, Prasadana and Ropana Varti (pill) should be equal to that of one and a half and twice as much as a Kalaya pulse for ocular affections in general” (Uttara Tantra, 18.32). For the powders, the measure is by the tip of the applicator rod: the dose “should be respectively twice, thrice and four times as much as would be contained at the end of a Salaka (rod).” A pea and a half of pill; two, three or four rod-tips of powder — a real posology, worked out to the grain.

It is worth pausing on how modern this feels. To distinguish a medicine's route and form (pill versus liquid versus powder), to rank those forms by potency, to match the form to the severity of the case, and to fix a reproducible dose for each — this is the essential grammar of pharmacy, set down in a surgical text from antiquity. The old physicians were not merely mixing paste; they were formulating.

The Salaka: The Collyrium Rod and Its Vessels of Gold, Copper and Horn

No object in this chapter is described with more loving precision than the humble Salaka — the applicator rod with which the collyrium was laid along the eye. The tradition held that the material of the rod, and of the vessel that held the Anjana, should be chosen to suit the medicine. “The vessels containing the different kinds of Anjana should be according to the different kinds of Anjana themselves, and these vessels as well as the Salaka (rod) for the use should be made of gold, silver, horn, copper, Vaidurya (a kind of precious stone), bell-metal and iron respectively (in accordance with the different tastes of the drugs the Anjanas are made of)” (Uttara Tantra, 18.33).

The commentators fill in the elegant logic: by Dallana's account, a sweet Anjana was kept in a golden vessel, a sour one in silver, a saline one in horn, an astringent one in copper or iron, a pungent one in Vaidurya, a bitter one in bell-metal. The idea — that the container should not react adversely with what it holds, and should be matched to the drug's nature — is a genuine intuition about the chemistry of storage, dressed in the language of taste and metal. It is the same instinct that a modern pharmacist follows in choosing amber glass for a light-sensitive medicine.

The Salaka: eight fingers long, slender at the middle, terminating in a small bud-shaped ball, well polished and easy to handle — and made of gold, silver, copper, horn, iron or bell-metal to match the collyrium it carried (Uttara Tantra, 18.33)

And the rod itself is drawn like a fine tool. “The end of the rod should terminate in a bud-shaped ball with the girth of that of a Kalaya pulse, its entire length measuring eight fingers only. It would be well polished, slender at the middle and capable of being easily handled” (Uttara Tantra, 18.33). Eight finger-breadths long, waisted in the middle for grip, tipped with a small smooth bud the size of a pea so that it could carry the paste without scratching the eye: a purpose-built surgical instrument, specified down to its proportions. Copper, and precious stones such as Vaidurya, and horn or bone, the text adds, “will prove beneficial.” It is a cousin of the other named instruments of this Uttara Tantra — not least the Salaka (needle) of the famous cataract-couching operation — and a reminder that the Sushruta Samhita is, at heart, a text written by and for people who made and used real tools.

From Kaninika to Apanga: How the Anjana Was Applied

The method of application is described with the calm authority of someone who had done it ten thousand times. “The lids of the affected eye (of the patient) should be slantingly drawn apart with the left hand, and the Anjana should be carefully applied by holding the rod with the right hand and by constantly moving the rod from the Kaninika to the Apanga and vice versa (along the inner side of the eye-lid). This process should be repeated (twice or thrice) according to requirements” (Uttara Tantra, 18.34). The Kaninika is the inner corner of the eye by the nose; the Apanga is the outer corner by the temple. To draw the lids gently apart and run the loaded rod back and forth between the two corners, laying a thin, even line of medicine along the inside of the lid — that is exactly the motion by which kajal is still applied along the waterline today, minus the medicine and the physician.

The precautions that follow show a surgeon's respect for the organ. The Anjana “in no case should be thickly painted in the corners of the eye (i.e., in the Kaninika and the Apanga from fear of hurting them), nor the organ should be washed till all the aggravations of the deranged (bodily) Dosha in the locality are completely removed therefrom, in as much as it might bring on a fresh aggravation and impair the strength of the eye-sight” (Uttara Tantra, 18.34). Do not over-load the tender corners; do not rinse the eye too soon. And when the collyrium has done its work — when there is a natural watering and the local Dosha has settled — “the eye should be first washed with water, and Pratyanjana should then be used”: a gentle after-collyrium to close the procedure. Every step is timed and conditional; nothing is careless.

Forbidden Cases: When the Classics Said Never to Use Anjana

Perhaps the most striking part of the whole chapter — and the most revealing of the classical mind — is not when to use Anjana, but when never to. The Sushruta Samhita devotes a full passage to the Forbidden Cases, and it reads like a safety checklist written by someone who had seen collyrium go wrong. “The application of Anjanas is prohibited,” the text begins, “in cases of persons suffering from fever, Udavarta (upward-moving wind), and the diseases of the head, and during fits of anger, grief, fear, weeping and intoxication, as well as in cases of the retention of stool and urine, in as much as it might produce (in these cases) lachrymation, Sula (aching pain), redness, pain, blindness (Timira), swelling in the locality, as well as giddiness” (Uttara Tantra, 18.34).

The list goes on, and every item has a rationale. An Anjana used during insomnia, the text warns, “might be followed by the loss of the eye-sight.” “The application of an Anjana in a windy day may impair the eye-sight.” “Application to the eyes affected with dust or smoke may bring on redness, Adhimantha (ophthalmia) and local secretion.” Applied straight after a nasal errhine (Nasya), “it may usher in an aching pain and swelling in the eyes.” It “leads to the aggravation of the disease, if applied in any disease of the head.” And it would be useless or worse if applied “before sun-rise, after a bath, or in a very cold day, owing to the fixedness of the deranged bodily Dosha,” or in a case of indigestion, “owing to the sluggish condition of the internal passages of the body.”

Read as a whole, this is a genuine contra-indications list — the recognition that even a good medicine is wrong in the wrong body at the wrong moment. A physician who will not put a collyrium in an eye that is feverish, grief-stricken, sleepless, wind-stung, smoke-irritated, freshly bathed or undigested is a physician thinking about the whole state of the patient, not just the eye. It is the same sober, self-limiting honesty we find wherever the classical texts are at their best — and it is, quietly, the strongest possible argument against the casual home use of any eye-preparation.

Anjana, Kajal and Surma: The Living Tradition and a Modern Safety Word

How did the physician's Anjana become the household kajal? The answer is the ordinary story of a medical practice softening, over centuries, into a domestic and cosmetic one. The classical texts themselves opened the door: alongside the medicated Anjanas used for disease, the tradition prescribed a gentle daily collyrium as part of the ideal routine of a healthy person — a practice we will meet in the next section. From that daily, preventive, well-person's collyrium it is a short step to kajal (the lamp-black paste of the home) and surma (the fine mineral powder of the Unani and Persianate tradition), applied for beauty, for custom, and in folk belief for the comfort of the eyes.

From the physician's Anjana to the household kajal-daani: the medicated classical collyrium softened, over centuries, into the lamp-black kajal and mineral surma of everyday custom. A beautiful heritage — and one that today calls for a clear word about safety

That living tradition is beautiful, and it deserves honesty rather than either romance or scorn. The honest word is about safety. Modern public-health testing has repeatedly found that many traditional kajal and surma preparations — especially the dark mineral surmas — contain high levels of lead, and sometimes other heavy metals. Lead is a cumulative poison, and it is particularly harmful to infants and young children, in whom even small exposures can affect development. For this reason health authorities in India and abroad have warned specifically against applying traditional kajal and surma to the eyes of babies and children. It is a hard thing to say about so cherished a custom, but it is true, and saying it plainly is the responsible thing to do.

None of this diminishes the Anjana of the Sushruta Samhita as a piece of intellectual history. If anything, it deepens the respect: the classical text hedged its collyriums with cleansing, timing, dosing, matched instruments and a long list of forbidden cases precisely because its authors understood that a substance placed in the eye is a serious matter. The casual, unhedged, home version they would very likely have viewed with alarm. The right way to carry this heritage forward is to admire the science of the old chapter, to enjoy the beauty of the custom — and to leave the actual eyes to modern medicine.

Anjana Across the Classical Texts

Sushruta's is the great surgical account of Anjana, but the collyrium runs through the whole classical corpus, and its place in the healthy person's routine is set down by the other founding texts. The Charaka Samhita, the great work of internal medicine, in its Sutrasthana chapter on the daily regimen, counts a collyrium among the practices of a well-kept day: it recommends a soothing Sauviranjana (a collyrium of antimony) for daily use to keep the eyes clear, with a stronger Rasanjana at intervals to clear accumulated Kapha — the classical, preventive, well-person's version of the practice (Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana, Chapter 5).

Vagbhata's Ashtanga Hridaya carries the same practice into its beloved chapter on the daily routine: among the morning duties of Dinacharya — the tongue-scraping, the oil-pulling, the tooth-cleaning, the nasal drops and the oil massage — Vagbhata places the daily collyrium, on the same reasoning that a little regular care keeps the sense-organs bright (Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana, Chapter 2). It is the same author whose work we follow for the classical rules of diet and the seasonal regimen.

The specialist eye-therapies — the three Anjana, the Tarpana and Puta-paka, the Aschyotana and Seka — are treated in depth in the eye-disease sections of the later ophthalmological tradition too, and the medieval Bhavaprakasha of Bhavamishra restates the collyriums for its own age in the eye-disease chapter (Netra-roga-adhikara) of its Madhyama Khanda. When independent classical authorities — Sushruta the surgeon, Charaka the physician, Vagbhata the synthesist, Bhavamishra the compiler — all describe the same graded collyriums with the same purposes, that consistency is itself a kind of evidence: they were careful practitioners converging on a real, worked-out craft, read here as heritage.

The Classical Eye-Therapies at a Glance

The measures of the Kriya-Kalpa, gathered into one view. As throughout, these are descriptions from ancient medical texts, offered as heritage and history of medicine — not modern treatments, not medical advice, and not connected to any product.

Dinacharya and the Small Rituals of Daily Self-Care

If a chapter as clinical as this one has any gentle, everyday echo for the well, it is only this: that the classical tradition wrapped the care of the senses inside the larger idea of Dinacharya, the daily routine — the belief that a life of small, steady, well-timed rituals keeps the body bright. The daily collyrium sat in that routine beside the morning bath, the oiling of the hair and body, the cleaning of the teeth and the tongue. We honour that spirit not by touching the eyes — which, as this whole article has argued, belong to a doctor — but by keeping the ordinary, safe, non-ocular comforts of a well-kept day.

There is one honest place a wellness brand belongs in a story like this, and it is a modest one, kept entirely away from the eyes and from any suggestion of treatment: in the small rituals of skin and hair care that an Indian household has always valued. Nothing below is for use in or near the eyes, and nothing below is offered as a treatment, cure or preventive for any eye condition or any other condition. These are simply time-honoured everyday cosmetic products for general care.

The most everyday of these is the morning bath itself — Snana, one of the first duties the classics placed in the daily routine. A gentle, traditional cleansing bar is the simplest expression of it.

A second belongs to the classical love of oiling — the Abhyanga of the hair and scalp that the daily routine prized, a matter of grooming and comfort.

And a third belongs to the tradition's love of a fine facial oil — the precious night oil the classics prized for the skin's clarity and glow, a pure matter of appearance and self-care for the face (not the eyes).

That is the whole of the honest place for any of this: a few small, safe comforts within a well-kept day. The Sushruta Samhita's Anjana chapter is about the medicated care of the eye by a physician; the everyday skin-and-hair products above have nothing to do with the eyes or with any of it, and are offered only as ordinary daily self-care.

Reading Anjana With Modern Eyes

How should a thoughtful reader today hold a chapter like this — with neither naive belief nor easy dismissal? As always with the classical corpus, the honest course is to separate what still commands respect from what belongs to its age, and to say plainly which is which.

What commands respect is the method, and it is genuinely impressive. To divide collyrium into three medicines by purpose; to match taste and fat content to that purpose; to rank pill, liquid and powder by potency and fix a dose for each; to specify an eight-finger, bud-tipped rod and a matched vessel for every drug; to describe the exact motion of application and its precautions; and, above all, to append a long, reasoned list of forbidden cases — this is the architecture of real pharmacology and real clinical caution, set down in antiquity. The honest conversation about what modern medicine has rediscovered in Sushruta has a natural place for this chapter: not because the specific collyriums are validated, but because the way of thinking — formulate, dose, match the tool, list the contra-indications — is exactly right.

And what belongs to its age must be said just as plainly. The specific medicines are of their time, and modern ophthalmology — with its understanding of infection, of the delicate surface of the eye, of lead and other toxins, and with its sterile drops and instruments — is an entirely different and far safer science. Several of the substances the folk tradition later adopted, above all the mineral surmas, are now known to be actively harmful. The classical framework of doshas and channels was a beautiful way of organising what could be seen from the outside; it is not a substitute for an eye examination, and nothing in it should ever delay someone from seeing a doctor about their eyes.

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