Dropsy

Bodily condition in which the body
retains excess water, and in consequence swells up. In several hymns
in the Vedas, the oldest Hindu
religious texts, dropsy is described as
the punishment levied by the god
Varuna for speaking falsehood. Varuna
was conceived as the guardian of
cosmic order (rta), and intentionally
false speech was considered the
paradigm of anrta, the destructive force
that ran counter to the ordering force
of rta. In this case the punishment was
seen as fitting the crime, as if one had
been metaphorically inflated by the lies
one had told.