About the Nighantu

The Nighantu exists because the reference material we needed internally did not exist anywhere public in a usable form. Ayurvedic herb information online is either a two-paragraph blog post or a paywalled academic database, and almost none of it distinguishes clearly between what a classical text says, what a modern trial found, and what a marketer wrote. So we built the reference we wanted: one page per herb, formulation and instrument, opening with a plain definition, stating identification and pharmacology as structured facts, citing the classical sources by name, and reporting research findings with dates attached. ## Who publishes it Age Ayurveda, an Ayurvedic products company. We sell herbs, classical preparations and equipment at ageayurveda.com. That is a conflict of interest, and pretending otherwise would be worse than declaring it. Our position on it is set out in full in our editorial standards. The short version: the reference pages are written as reference pages. Where a page describes something we sell, one clearly labelled block at the end of the page says so. There is no advertising, no sponsorship and no affiliate link anywhere on the site, and no page written because a product of ours needed a page. Some pages do compare named commercial products, other companies' included, against what the Ayurvedic Formulary of India specifies. We take no money from any manufacturer named here, we publish no score and no ranking, every figure is that manufacturer's own published figure with the date we read it, and we correct errors whoever the correction favours. The five rules those pages follow are set out in the editorial standards. ## What is here Monographs on single herbs, classical formulations and Ayurvedic instruments, a glossary of compounds, plant families and pharmacological terms, and a full practice guide to Shirodhara. ## What is not here Dosage advice for individuals, diagnosis, treatment recommendations, and any claim that something cures or treats a condition. Traditional indications are reported as the tradition states them. Research findings are reported as the papers state them. Neither is a recommendation. We also do not publish the parts of our internal reference that cover manufacturing process detail, other medical traditions, or products that have not launched. ## Using the material Read it, quote it, cite it. Attribution details are on how we source. Every page has a machine-readable Markdown twin at the same URL with .md appended, and there is a curated index at llms.txt. ## Corrections We would rather be corrected than be wrong. See corrections.