India's principal food grain, rice is sweet and cooling, sweet in post-digestive effect and light. Rice forms condensed stools, cures pitta and may be slightly vata-stimulating. As a gruel it is the primary diet in illness, especially fevers and intestinal inflammations, and in convalescence. Rice cooked with flesh, vegetables, fate, oil, ghee, marrow, fruit, black gram, mung beans, milk or sesame is strengthening, nourishing and cordial ('hearty'). It is used in the preparation of various medicines and is itself a medicine (for example, it is repeatedly) washed and the wash water given in excessive menstrual bleeding).
References:
Ayurveda Life Health and Longevity by Robert E. Svoboda - Penguin Books.
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