About the Nighantu
A referenced encyclopedia of Ayurvedic materia medica, published by Age Ayurveda.
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 other commercial content on the site, no advertising, and no page written because
a product needed a page.
## 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We also do not publish the parts of our internal reference that cover manufacturing process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.