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Khasátmaja. Khasa + átman + jan +d́a = khasátmaja. The son of a rákśasii(1) mother was called a khasátmaja. He himself might or might not be a rákśasa. (In the Puranas there are many stories about accomplished humans or gods who were born of rakśasii mothers.) Karkat́ii Rákśasii’s son, Sutanuk [to whom in particular “Khasátmaja” is applied as an epithet], was a man of ideal character – a physician highly dedicated to the welfare of humankind. Karkat́ii Rákśasii’s husband, Anubhasen, was a human and a king. Karkat́ii Rákśasii was the physician who invented a medicine for karkata [cancer].(2)
I regret to say that the cure for cancer invented by Karkat́ii Rákśasii has long been forgotten. For diagnoses of diseases and for research on medicines, she had to deal with cadavers. The undeveloped people of those days wrongly thought that she was procuring dead bodies with the intention of eating human flesh. It is said that Karkat́ii Rákśasii was burnt alive by those ungrateful people. The story goes that the living flames that leapt high from her burning body brought down the curse of cholera, and as her blessing, the cure for diabetes came floating down.
A precise medicine for cholera is not yet available to humankind. Brine is no medicine. No one has yet invented a sure cure for cholera. (It passes one’s comprehension to imagine how this dreadful disease can be cured through the primitive worship of the goddess of cholera.)
Footnotes
(1) Feminine of rákśasa. –Trans.
(2) Linguistic information omitted here. –Trans.