Most people know about the tamarind tree. It is the most common tree found in the backyards of our houses and as an avenue plant, mostly grown for sheltering purposes. Apart from the commercial and household purposes, tamarind can be used as medicine also.
MEDICINAL USES
• Loss of appetite: Mix jaggery water with tamarind pulp and spice with cinnamon bark (daalcheeni), cardamom (ilaaychee). Keep this in your mouth and suck the juice in case of anorexia.
• Diarrhea: Collect the outer shells of tamarind seeds. Grind them and mix together with dried ginger powder, rock salt, and Bishop’s weed (ajwaayan). Take with fresh butter milk. It checks diarrhea quickly.
• Bleeding piles: Fry tamarind leaves in oil and ghee and cook in sufficient quantity of curd. Add powder of dried pomegranate, coriander seeds, and dried ginger to it and take internally. Liquid gruel soured with tamarind pulp is also useful in bleeding piles.
• Rectal prolapse: Fry the tamarind seeds and rub with water. Paste on anus after setting the tract in position. It will not prolapse again.
• Cough: Take the following: epicarp of tamarind fruit one part, turmeric two parts, sarjarasa three parts, spreading hog weed (punarnava) one part, and jasmine leaves (chamelee) nine parts. Grind and make into a wick. Fumigate as and when needed to get relief from cough.
• Swelling caused due to hurt and wounds: Prepare bolus by boiling wheat flour with a pinch of salt, tamarind leaves and tamarind juice. Apply this as poultice in warm condition over the swelling. This relieves pain and swelling. Alternately, you can apply the paste prepared from fruit pulp of tamarind and lime to the site of injury followed by fomentation.
• Freckles: Application of paste of the root bark of tamarind removes freckles.
• White discharge: Soak the tamarind seeds in water for a day and pound with milk. Take this paste regularly.
• Common cold: In acute cold, soup made from tamarind fruit is beneficial. When the phlegm is thickened, it should be eliminated by head evacuation procedures such as nasya karma.
• Edema: The affected part should be bathed with hot decoction of tamarind leaves.
• Eye diseases: Extract juice from tamarind leaves and mix with milk. Apply to the eyes in case of redness, secretion, pain, and congestion. To get relief from eye itching, you can apply the paste of black pepper, tamarind juice, and ghee.
• Ear diseases: In case of earache, oil processed with juice of tamarind fruit is efficacious.