तक्मन्

यन्त्रोपारोपितकोशांशः

Apte

पृष्ठभागोऽयं यन्त्रेण केनचित् काले काले मार्जयित्वा यथास्रोतः परिवर्तयिष्यते। तेन मा भूदत्र शोधनसम्भ्रमः। सज्जनैः मूलमेव शोध्यताम्।

तक्मन् [takman], m. N. of a disease; Av. (various Kāṇḍas).

Monier-Williams

पृष्ठभागोऽयं यन्त्रेण केनचित् काले काले मार्जयित्वा यथास्रोतः परिवर्तयिष्यते। तेन मा भूदत्र शोधनसम्भ्रमः। सज्जनैः मूलमेव शोध्यताम्।

तक्मन् n. = तोक्, offspring Naigh.

तक्मन् m. ( तञ्च्)" shrinking " , N. of a disease or of a class of diseases (accompanied by skin-eruptions) AV. i , iv-vi , ix , xi f. , xix.

Vedic Index of Names and Subjects

पृष्ठभागोऽयं यन्त्रेण केनचित् काले काले मार्जयित्वा यथास्रोतः परिवर्तयिष्यते। तेन मा भूदत्र शोधनसम्भ्रमः। सज्जनैः मूलमेव शोध्यताम्।

Takman is a disease repeatedly mentioned in the Atharvaveda, but later not known under this name. It is the subject of five hymns of the Atharvaveda, and is often mentioned elsewhere. Weber first identified it with ‘fever,’ and Grohmann showed that all the symptoms pointed to that ailment. Reference is made to the alternate hot and shivering fits of the patient, to the yellow colour of the jaundice which accompanies the fever, and to its peculiar periodicity. The words used to describe its varieties are anye-dyuḥ, ubhaya-dyuḥ, tṛtīyaka, vi-tṛtīya, and sadaṃ-di, the exact sense of most of which terms is somewhat uncertain. It is agreed that the first epithet designates the fever known as quotidianus, which recurs each day at the same hour, though the word is curious (lit. ‘on the other--i.e., next, day’). The ubhaya-dyuḥ (‘on both days’) variety appears to mean a disease recurring for two successive days, the third being free; this corresponds to the rhythmus quartanus complicatus. But Sāyaṇa considers that it means a fever recurring on the third day, the ‘tertian.’ The tṛtīyaka, however, must be the ‘tertian’ fever, though Zimmer suggests that it may mean a fever which is fatal at the third paroxysm. Grohmann regards the vi-tṛtīyaka as equivalent to the tertiana duplicata, a common form in southern countries, in which the fever occurs daily, but with a correspondence in point of time or severity of attack on alternate days. Bloomfield suggests that it is identical with the ubhaya-dyuḥ variety. The sadaṃ-di type appears to be the kind later known as saṃtata-jvara (‘continuous fever’), in which there are attacks of several days’ duration, with an interval followed by a fresh period of attack. Fever occurred at different seasons, in the autumn (śārada), in the hot weather (graiṣma), in the rains (vārṣika), but was especially prevalent in the first, as is indicated by the epithet viśva-śārada, ‘occurring every autumn.’

The disease is said to arise when Agni enters the waters. From this Weber deduced that it was considered to be the result of a chill supervening on heat, or the influence of heat on marshy land. Grohmann preferred to see in this connexion of the origin of the disease with Agni's entering the waters an allusion to the fact that fever arises in the rainy season, the time when Agni, as lightning, descends to earth with the rain. Zimmer. who accepts this view, further refers to the prevalence of fever in the Terai, and interprets vanya, an epithet of fever found in the Atharvaveda, as meaning ‘sprung from the forest,’ pointing out that fever is mentioned as prevalent among the Mūjavants and Mahāvṛṣas, two mountain tribes of the western Himālaya. There is no trace of fever having been observed to be caused by the bite of the anopheles mosquito, which breeds in stagnant water: this theory has without reason been held to be known to classical Indian medicine.

Among the symptoms of Takman, or among complications accompanying it, are mentioned ‘itch’ (Pāman), ‘headache’ (śīrṣa-śoka), ‘cough’ (Kāsikā), and ‘consumption,’ or perhaps some form of itch (Balāsa).

It is perhaps significant that the Takman does not appear until the Atharvaveda. It is quite possible that the Vedic Āryans, when first settled in India, did not know the disease, which would take some generations to become endemic and recognized as dangerous. What remedies they used against it is quite uncertain, for the Atharvaveda mentions only spells and the Kuṣṭha, which can hardly have been an effective remedy, though still used in later times. Fever must, even in the Atharvan period, have claimed many victims, or it would not be mentioned so prominently.