DHANWANTARI. There have probably been several persons of this name, and at different eras. The name occurs, along with those of Charaka and Susruta, in poems written in the time of Nala Raja. Professor Wilson supposed Charaka and Susruta to be of the 9th or 10th centuries A.D. A Dhanwantari is supposed to have been king of Kasi or Benares, and as such styled Deva-dasa Kasi Raja. He is regarded as the founder of Hindu medicine, and he takes in India the place occupied by lEsculapius amongst the Greeks. A_ medical work, bearing this name as its author, is still extant, and in use amongst all the Hindu physicians of British India. His era can only be conjectured to have been before Christ. The name is applied also to a teacher of niedica 1 science, to whom the authorship of the Ayur Veda is attributed ; but other physicians, Bhela, Derodasa, and Palakapya, are also so named ; and a physician of this name was one of the nine gems ' at the court of Vikranoa. It is also the name of a Vedic deity, to whom offerings at twilight were made in the N.E. quarter. In one Brahmanical account of the deluge, a Dhanwan tari is said to have been, with other thirteen precious products, a physician produced at the churning of the ocean. Takaji-ca-coond, or foun
tain of the snake-king,' is about two miles east of Naoli, near the boundary of Bhynsror and Man pura. The road, tbrcicgh a jungle, over the flat highland or Pat'har, presents no indication of the fountain, until you suddenly find yourself on the brink of a precipice nearly 200 feet in depth, crowded with noble trees, on which the knotted koril is conspicuous. The descent to this glen is over masses of rock ; and about half-way down a small platform, are two shrines, ono containing the statue of Takshac, the snake-king, the other of Dhanwantari, the physician who WM pro duced at the churning of the ocean. The coond or fountain is at the southern extremity of the abyss. Dhanwantari of the Hindus has not an attendant serpent, like his brother Esculapius of Greece. The health-bestowing Dhanwantari, the celestial physician, arose from the sea when churned for the beverage of immortality.' Ife is generally represented as a venerable man with a book in his hand.—Rajastltait, p. 718; Colem.'s Hind. lIfyth. p. 383 ; Moor, p. 342 ; Dowson.