Age Ayurveda Nighantu

A nighantu is the classical Ayurvedic lexicon of medicinal substances. The tradition has produced them for centuries, from the Dhanvantari Nighantu to the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu and the Raja Nighantu, each cataloguing dravyas with their names, properties and uses. This is a modern one: 740 referenced entries on herbs, classical formulations and Ayurvedic instruments, free to read, quote and cite.

Every entry opens with a plain definition, states its key facts in a table, cites the classical texts it comes from, and reports published research with dates attached.

740 monographs 805 glossary definitions Free to read and quote

Sections

• Herbs

  505 entries. Single-herb monographs covering identification, Ayurvedic pharmacology, phytochemistry, classical references and published research.

• Formulations

  143 entries. Classical preparations: churnas, vatis, tailas, ghritas, kashayas, arishtas, avalehas, guggulus and rasayanas.

• Instruments

  37 entries. Panchakarma equipment, therapeutic vessels, diagnostic tools and para-surgical instruments described in the classical texts.

• Reference

  53 entries. Cross-cutting entries: pharmacological actions, compound classes, doshas, plant families and body systems.

• Classical texts

  2 entries. The Samhitas and Nighantus the monographs draw on.

• Glossary

  805 short definitions for compounds, plant families and pharmacology terms.

Guides

• Shirodhara

  The full practice guide: classical basis, choosing the oil by dosha, temperature and duration, session protocol, cautions, equipment and notes for therapists.

• Prakriti self-check

  Fifteen questions built only from Caraka's description of the vata, pitta and kapha constitutions, each answer cited to its verse.

Reference tables and data

• The Ayurvedic Formulary of India

  Every formulation transcribed from the formulary on this site, entry by entry.

• What the formulary's ingredient names mean

  The Sanskrit ingredient names the formulary uses, resolved to a botanical identity where one could be established, and published as unresolved where it could not.

• Ayurvedic disease names in WHO ICD-11

  Which Ayurvedic disease terms WHO lists against which ICD-11 Traditional Medicine Module 2 codes, taken from the classification itself.

• Ayurvedic practitioners near you

  A directory of Ayurvedic practices, starting with Mumbai, each listed only when a named practitioner, the practice, its address and a business phone are published by the practice.

• Who manufactures Ayurvedic medicine in India

  The companies manufacturing Ayurvedic medicine across the Indian states, and what each one's own website allows an automated reader to do.

• Linked data knowledge graph

  A machine-readable JSON-LD graph of the botanical taxa, PubChem constituents and Dravyaguna properties published here.

• Open datasets

  Downloadable machine-readable datasets of the pharmacology, constituents and botanical taxonomy, under CC BY 4.0 and archived with a DOI.

How to use this

Each monograph has a plain-Markdown twin: append .md to any entry URL, for example /herb/ashwagandha.md. There is a curated site map for language models at llms.txt and a full text index at llms-full.txt. Everything here may be quoted and cited; see how we source for attribution.

What this is not

This is reference material, not medical advice. Traditional uses and research findings are reported as their sources state them, never as claims about what any product does. The site is published by Age Ayurveda, which sells Ayurvedic products; where an entry relates to something we sell, that is disclosed on the page itself and nowhere else. See our editorial standards.