of a sutra in the third decade. The sutras of the second Prasna appear to have been divided into divisions of fifteen sutras each. Here too, the present order of the reading of the sutras differs from the reading indicated by the string of words. Neither does the first Prasna consist of one hundred sutras corresponding to the ten decades, as indicated by the word 'dasa,' ten, in the Chittha. Nor does the second Prasna contain 135 sutras corresponding to nine divisions of fifteen sutras each. No such Chittha is found in the other Prasna. From this it follows that the text in its present form has undergone a vast change from its original and is full of omissions and commissions.
What however led this Library to undertake the edition of this work in spite of the manifest mutilation which it has undergone, is an attempted restoration of the text coupled with the prominence which it gives to fasting[१] and deep-breathing[२] as a sure means both curative and preventive of all those diseases, which are found to defy the power of drugs in the form of churna, taila, lehya, or rasayana.
In no other Indian medical work, ancient and modern, is so much efficacy attached to the theory of fasting and deep-breathing coupled with natural Rasa diet. Of late some celebrated physicians of America have been enthusiastically preaching and expounding, both from the platform and the press the theory of fasting and deep-breathing. "Of the two principal matters recommended as the practical outcome of the theory of health development in this book," says E. H.Dewey in his Introduction, P. 5, to his Science of Living, "is that of fasting or the abstinance from food until natural hunger calls for it, is the best way to bring about recovery from disease.... The second is that digestion is best promoted and food so assimilated as to afford the largest amount of nourishment
