Комм. Нянамоли тхеры:
Ahivätakaroga 'snake-breath pest': ahi=snake> väta=wind (breath or blast), roga=pest (sickness). We do not know what sickness this termmay represent. Plague, cholera and malaria have been some of the suggestions made.
C.P.D. (q.v.) gives two Pitaka refs. (Vin.i, 78, 79) and several from the commentaries (on Vin., Ja.,
Dh.etc.).
VinA. says '"Ahivätakaroga" is märi-vyädhi' (if the reading is right; but that means simply 'killing-sickness'), and adds 'where that sickness arises, that family dies with all its bipeds and quadrupeds: or else someone who breaks a wall or a roof and flees, or who goes through (the walls of?) a village, etc. (tirogamadigato), escapes' (note the flight through the walls in § 16 below).
DhA. (i, 187) says ' First the flies die, next the beetles, the mice, . . . and last of all the human beings in the house'. See also note in Ja. trsln, ii, 55. At Ja. (Comy.), ii, 295 a näga-räjä (' Royal Naga-Serpent' or ' Naga-King' cf. ahi=snake above) kills people with a näsika-väta (' nose-breath ' or ' nostril-blast'), and the same term occurs at Vis. 400, where this 'nostril-blast' emitted by a nägaräjä is countered by a supanna-vata (a Supanna being a sort of winged demon who preys upon the semi-demon Näga-Serpents). There is another version ofthis Vesäli plague in the Sanskrit Mahävastu (i, 253), which doubtless grew upindependently from a common source, in which the termadhiväsa is used inconnexion with this sickness when it attacks a district and, contrastingly, mandalaka when it attacks a family. The translator is indebted to Miss I. B. Horner for this information.