Asatmyendriyartha-samyoga (unwholesome contact of the senses with their objects)
How much weight this concept bears. This concept rests on classical exegesis. The classical base, stated precisely rather than by a citation count, is three loci in Charaka: the general statement at Sutra Sthana 8/10 in Kaviratna's numbering, the three-causes elaboration at Sutra Sthana 11/37 in standard numbering, and one continuous block at Sharira Sthana 1/125-136 in Kaviratna's numbering (1/118-129 standard). Twelve of the fourteen entries in the classical array resolve into those three loci, two of the twelve are Kaviratna's own translator's notes rather than text, one further entry is a bare pointer to standard-numbering locations and one is explicitly marked unsourced. The locus audit is set out in gatheringNotes. Earlier wording called this the thinnest of the four concepts in the cluster without saying thin in what, which was fair criticism. What is thin is not the Charaka attestation, which is a sustained and consecutive treatment, but two other things. Independent classical attestation outside Charaka: no public-domain translation of Ashtanga Hridaya or Ashtanga Sangraha was located, no Sushruta parallel was retrieved for this record, and nothing outside Charaka is quoted here. And the modern evidence base. The dedicated modern literature retrieved consists of narrative and conceptual reviews, mostly in non-indexed Ayurvedic journals and two in PubMed-indexed ones, which restate the Charaka verses and then assert, without measurement, that modern exposures such as headphones, screens, noise and bright light are instances of the category. Nothing retrieved here defines atiyoga, ayoga, hinayoga or mithyayoga in measurable terms for any sense; no threshold was found proposed, let alone validated; no inter-rater reliability study was located; no cohort followed under this framing was identified. There is a real and substantial modern literature on sensory exposures and health, covering noise-induced hearing loss, unsafe listening, screen time and myopia, light at night and circadian disruption, and sensory deprivation, and some of its findings are broadly congruent with the classical intuition that both excess and deprivation can harm. That congruence should be stated carefully, and the record states the caveat in the same breath as the adjacency. The mapping is this record's translation and not one the classical text makes. Those results were generated independently, with quantified exposures and comparison groups, and they neither derive from nor test the Ayurvedic scheme. The mapping is also lopsided: the retrieved epidemiology is almost entirely about excess, whereas Charaka's category covers deficient and absent and perverse contact just as much as excessive contact, so the adjacency covers at most one of the four modes and leaves ayoga, hinayoga and mithyayoga without a comparator. The one genuinely distinctive element of the classical account, mithyayoga defined by the hostile, repulsive or frightening character of the stimulus rather than by its intensity, is also the element with the least modern purchase, since it makes the harmfulness of an exposure depend on its affective meaning to a particular organism. Charaka's own translator noted in the 1890s that the scheme counts three modes after enumerating four, that the definition of asatmya is merely verbal, and that the first and third causes are scarcely exclusive of each other. No answer to those criticisms was retrieved.
Asatmyendriyartha-samyoga is the third of Charaka's three general causes of disease: pathological contact between a sense organ and its object. The scheme is formal in the sense that the same small set of failure modes is applied to each of the five senses in turn. The sense-by-sense verses enumerate four modes, excessive contact (atiyoga), absent contact (ayoga), deficient or sparing contact (hinayoga) and perverse contact (mithyayoga), where perverse means contact with objects that are hostile, repulsive, frightening or out of season. The summary verse then counts three rather than four, and this record does not resolve that discrepancy: it is recorded under contested and under notKnown rather than smoothed over by merging ayoga and hinayoga. Charaka works the modes through sense by sense: sounds too loud or too faint or terrifying, touch withheld or excessive or untimely, sights too bright or too minute or seen in darkness, tastes taken in excess or wholly abstained from or combined against habit, smells too keen or too faint or putrid. The diseases arising this way are given a name of their own, aindriyaka. The concept defines a harmful exposure as one that does not suit the particular organism, satmya being habituated suitability, which makes the judgement individual rather than absolute.
| Subject area | How disease is held to arise |
|---|---|
| Domain, as recorded | etiology |
| Contested questions | 4 |
| Stated as not known | 13 |
| Classical citations | 14, 12 quoting the text |
| Research papers assessed | 10 |
| Citations checked | 2026-10-08 |
What is contested, and by whom
These are the questions on which the sources genuinely disagree. Each position is given as its source states it. No position is presented as the settled answer, because none of them is.
Are there three modes of faulty contact or four?
This is contested.
- Sharira 1.134 and the summary formulations state three.
- The sense-by-sense verses enumerate four: atiyoga, ayoga, hinayoga and mithyayoga.
- Kaviratna's note takes the view that hinayoga has simply been dropped from the count; other traditions merge ayoga and hinayoga into one. The texts do not resolve it.
Is asatmya absolute or individual?
This is contested.
- The definition given, that which does not accord with the organism, plus the okasatmya discussion in the taste verses, makes it strictly individual and habituation-dependent.
- The enumerated lists (loud sounds, dark objects, putrid smells) read as absolute and universal.
- If it is individual, the category cannot generate population-level prescriptions; if absolute, the okasatmya clause is redundant. Commentators use both readings depending on context.
Is this cause genuinely distinct from prajnaparadha?
This is contested.
- The classical scheme treats them as distinct members of a triad.
- Kaviratna objected in his note to Sharira 1.135 that the first and the third 'are scarcely exclusive of each other', since choosing to over-expose a sense is itself an act of faulty judgement.
- Some modern authors subordinate sensory misuse to prajnaparadha entirely, which collapses the triad into two causes.
- Sutra Sthana 11/37 applies the same three modes, excess and absence and injudicious contact, uniformly to sense objects, to acts and to time. On that reading the triad is one scheme applied to three domains rather than three independent causes, which makes the exclusivity question a question about the scheme and not about this category alone. This is a reading of the verse quoted in the classical array, offered as a position and not as a resolution.
What does mithyayoga actually pick out?
This is contested.
- A physical reading: stimuli that are physically damaging or out of the organ's operating range.
- An affective reading, which the verses support more directly: stimuli that are frightening, repulsive or hostile, that is, harmful by meaning rather than by energy.
- A seasonal reading, given the recurrent anartava clause about out-of-season scents and untimely heat and cold, which folds mithyayoga back into kala.
What is not known
Stated rather than left out. Where a negative has actually been searched for rather than assumed, the entry says so.
- What quantity of any sense exposure counts as atiyoga. No threshold was found proposed for any sense in the classical or the modern material retrieved here.
- Whether two trained examiners would agree on whether a given patient's exposure history constitutes ayoga, atiyoga or mithyayoga. No reliability study was retrieved.
- Whether the claimed route from faulty sense contact to dosha provocation to disease can be observed, or whether the dosha step is inferred purely from the outcome.
- Whether the affective criterion for mithyayoga (dreadful, repulsive, uncongenial stimuli) predicts anything beyond what ordinary stress and adversity measures already capture.
- Whether the classical claim of harm from sensory deprivation (ayoga) holds for the senses other than vision, where it is best documented, and whether the classical account of it is more than a plausible guess. No deprivation literature for hearing, smell or taste was searched for this record, so the record carries no comparator for the ayoga and hinayoga modes at all.
- Whether the category adds predictive value over quantified exposure assessment for the specific exposures where both could be applied, such as noise or screen time.
- Why hinayoga is enumerated and then not counted, and whether the omission is scribal, commentarial or substantive. Kaviratna's note raises it; no commentarial resolution was located for this record.
- How the individual-relative definition of asatmya is meant to be determined in a new patient before any harm has occurred.
- Whether Ashtanga Hridaya and Ashtanga Sangraha in fact carry this threefold cause with the same four modes. The record previously asserted this. No edition of either text was consulted for this record and no public-domain English translation was located, so the claim is now carried in the classical array marked unsourced and the gap is stated here instead.
- Whether Sushruta has a parallel to this category. No Sushruta passage was retrieved for this record, so no judgement is offered either way. Bhishagratna's translation is public domain and quotable, so this is a gap that a later pass can close rather than a permanent limit.
- Whether the clinical construct of sensory overload, as used in autism and sensory processing research, is a genuine adjacent literature for atiyoga or merely a verbal resemblance. That literature was deliberately not reached for: the construct measures a person's response rather than an exposure dose, which is a different object from atiyoga, and asserting the adjacency without retrieving and reading it would repeat the error this revision is correcting.
- What a search wider than the one recorded in the modern array would return. Diacritic transliterations, hyphenated and space-separated variants, Devanagari, the AYUSH Research Portal, DHARA and Google Scholar were not searched, so the record's statement about indexing is a statement about four transliterations in two databases on one date and nothing more.
- Whether Kaviratna's aphorism numbering offset holds outside the passage checked. The plus-seven offset was verified for Sharira 1/125-136 by matching the sense-by-sense content against carakasamhitaonline's standard numbering. It is not asserted for any other sthana or chapter, and in Sutra Sthana 11 Kaviratna's numbering does not appear to map onto the standard numbering by a constant offset at all, since he splits into separate aphorisms what the standard edition carries as one.
The terms this concept is built from
Each is a technical term in its own right. Where this site holds a lexicon entry for one, it is linked.
| Term | What it names |
|---|---|
| atiyoga | Excessive contact: too much of an otherwise suitable sense object |
| ayoga | Absence of contact: total deprivation of the sense object |
| hinayoga | Deficient or sparing contact. Listed in the sense-by-sense verses but dropped from the summary count of three, which Kaviratna flags as an inconsistency |
| mithyayoga | Perverse contact: objects that are hostile, repulsive, terrifying, out of season, or contrary to what the organism is habituated to |
| shrotra and shabda | Ear and sound: loud and harsh, or none at all, or very low; perverse contact is with rough, dreadful, uncongenial or danger-signalling sound |
| sparshana and sparsha | Skin and touch: total abstention, excess, or partial indulgence; perverse contact includes untimely oleation and untimely heat or cold |
| chakshu and rupa | Eye and form: very brilliant or very minute objects, or never exercising the eye; perverse contact is with hateful, terrible, distant or dark objects |
| rasana and rasa | Tongue and taste: excess of any taste, total abstention, or tastes taken against okasatmya (habituated suitability) |
| ghrana and gandha | Nose and smell: very mild or very keen scents, or total abstention; perverse contact is with putrid, poisonous, repulsive or out-of-season scents |
| satmya | Habituated suitability. Asatmya is defined negatively as that which does not accord with the organism, which makes the whole category individual-relative |
The classical passages
Each citation gives its address so a reader can check it in a printed edition, our account of what it establishes, and the result of reading it against its source.
Charaka Samhita, Sutra Sthana, Lesson VIII (Indriyopakramaniya), verse 10 in Kaviratna's numberingSutra Sthana 8:10 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
In consequence again of the excessive correlation, the absence of (judicious) correlation, and the impropriety of correlation, of the senses with their respective objects, the senses including the mind, falling away from their normal condition, become hurtful to the perceptions of which they are the respective sources or channels. In consequence again of a judicious correlation of the senses with their objects, they preserve their normal condition, and maintain in their normal condition the perceptions or knowledge respectively derived through them.
The general statement of the three modes of faulty sense contact, and that the immediate injury is to perception itself, with disease as a consequence rather than the first effect. Verified in the Kaviratna OCR: the chapter header reads 'LESSON VIII. We shall now explain the lesson on the Analysis of the Senses', and the aphorism number 10 is printed after the aphorism, as Kaviratna does throughout. No standard-numbering equivalent is asserted for this locus because none was retrieved.
Charaka Samhita, Sutra Sthana, Lesson XI (Tistraishaniya), the three-causes passage; standard numbering Sutra 11/37Sutra Sthana 11:37 (standard numbering per carakasamhitaonline.com); no Kaviratna aphorism number asserted, see numberingProblem · checked against the source
There are three causes of disease. They are excess of correlation, absence of correlation, and injudicious correlation in respect of perceptible Objects, of Acts, and of Time. A continuous gaze at objects of great power is an instance of excessive correlation. A total abstention from exercising the eye is absence or want of correlation. Injudicious correlation arises where the eye is directed to objects that are very minute, that are in close adjacence, that are very remote, that provoke anger or terror or amazement or aversion, that are repulsive, and that are exceedingly ugly. [...] Excess of correlation as regards objects of hearing arises from constantly exposing the ear to the stunning report of thunder or beat of drum or loud cries. To totally abstain from hearing (by shutting up the ears) is absence of correlation. Injudicious correlation arises from hearing harsh sounds, or words expressive of the death or destruction of persons and objects that are liked, or sounds produced by the sudden clash or impact of hard substances, or those expressive of censure and dire reproof.
A second and textually independent Charaka locus for the same scheme, outside the Sharira 1 block. It matters for two reasons. First, it shows the sense-by-sense working out is not confined to one passage. Second, it applies the same three modes uniformly to sense objects, to acts and to time, which bears directly on whether this cause is distinct from prajnaparadha and parinama or is one scheme applied to three domains.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verse 125 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:125 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
In consequence of hearing sounds that are very loud and harsh, in consequence, again, of hearing no sound at all or of hearing sounds that are very low, the sense of hearing becomes destroyed.
The atiyoga, ayoga and hinayoga forms for hearing, stated as damage to the sense organ itself.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verse 126 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:126 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
The contact of the ear with sounds that are rough, exceedingly dreadful, uncongenial, disagreeable, and indicative of danger, is regarded as false correlation.
That mithyayoga is defined by the affective and semantic character of the stimulus, not by its physical intensity. This is the point at which the category stops being about exposure dose.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verses 127-128 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:127-128 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
Total abstention from touch, excessive indulgence in touch, and partial indulgence in it, impair the sense of touch, as has been said in the abstract of touchable objects. Contact with winds raised by evil spirits and those proceeding from poisonous substances, and contact with oily substances and heat and cold that are all untimely, are called false Correlation of touch.
The atiyoga, ayoga, hinayoga and mithyayoga forms for touch. Added in revision: the record's components section already asserted the touch content, including untimely oleation and untimely heat and cold, with no quoted citation behind it.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verses 129-131 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:129-131 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
In consequence of beholding objects that are possessed of great effulgence, or objects that are very minute, or of never exercising the eye at all for vision, the power of vision becomes destroyed. The sight of objects that are hateful, or terrible, or repulsive, or of objects at a great distance and seen with straining eyes, or of objects that are of a dark hue, is regarded as false correlation in respect of vision. Excessive indulgence in any of the tastes, or a total abstention from all the tastes, or indulgence, while taking things that are from habit suitable to the physical organism, in tastes that do not at all agree with them, or a very sparing indulgence in tastes, impairs the organ of taste.
The sense-by-sense working out for vision and taste, and the explicit appeal to okasatmya (habituated suitability) as the standard for taste.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verses 132-133 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:132-133 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
Indulgence in scents that are very mild or very keen, or a total abstention from all scents, is destructive of the organ of scent. The contact of scent with the organ of scents, emitted by putrified objects or objects that are poisonous, or of scents that are disagreeable or repulsive, or of scents that do not belong to the season, is regarded as false correlation in respect of the power of scent.
The atiyoga, hinayoga and mithyayoga forms for smell, including the anartava (out-of-season) clause that the contested section treats as pulling mithyayoga back towards kala. Added in revision: the components section already asserted this content with no quoted citation behind it.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verse 134 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:134 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
Even this are the three kinds of contact with the senses of objects not in accordance with them. Each is provocative of the faults (viz., wind, bile, and phlegm). That should be known as Unaccordant which does not accord with the human organism.
The link from faulty sense contact to dosha provocation, and the circular definition of asatmya as that which does not accord with the organism.
Kaviratna's translator's note to Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verse 134Sharira Sthana 1:note to 134 · checked against the source
It will be seen, however, that with regard to every one of the senses, four and not three kinds of samyoga or yoga have been spoken of, viz., Atiyoga, Ayoga, Hinayoga, and Mithyayoga. The first implies excess of contact; the second, a total absence of contact; the third, sparing or partial contact, and the fourth, contact with objects that are hostile. In speaking, however, of only three kinds of contact, in verse 134, it would seem that the third (or Hinayoga) has been left out of consideration. The definition of asatmya as something that sahatmyatam na yati is a mere verbal one.
A documented internal inconsistency in the classical scheme (four modes enumerated, three counted) and a contemporaneous translator's objection that the definition of asatmya is merely verbal. This is a primary-source criticism, not a modern one.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verse 135 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:135 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
The diseases which spring from the false, the excessive, and the partial correlation of sounds and the rest (with the corresponding organs of sense), should be known by the learned by the name of diseases appertaining to the senses.
That diseases from this cause form a named class, aindriyaka, parallel to the prajnaparadha-derived and time-derived classes.
Kaviratna's translator's note to Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verse 135Sharira Sthana 1:note to 135 · checked against the source
It will be seen that diseases, according to their causes, are divided into three classes: 1. those due to impairment or destruction of the understanding, memory, etc., or, as it is otherwise called, 'Prajnaparadha', i.e., faults of judgment; 2. those which fall within 'Kalasamprapti', i.e., the influence of time; and 3. the improper correlation of objects with the senses by which they are apprehended. The first and the third, it would seem, are scarcely exclusive of each other. Some of the diseases, again, which fall under the second class, may be due to the same causes, which bring about those of the first and the third classes. Altogether, the classification does not seem to be scientific.
The source of the exclusivity objection that the contested section attributes to Kaviratna. Added in revision because contested question 3 quoted this note without the record carrying the note as an addressed citation. It is a translator's objection from the 1890s, not a classical doctrine, and is labelled as such.
Charaka Samhita, Sharira Sthana, Lesson I, verse 136 in Kaviratna's numberingSharira Sthana 1:136 (Kaviratna) · checked against the source
Even these are regarded as the causes of all sensations which are productive of misery. As regards happiness, it is said that there is only one cause, viz., harmonious correlation. It is extremely difficult of attainment.
The closing statement of the etiology: samyak yoga, judicious correlation, is the single cause of health, and the text concedes it is extremely hard to attain.
Charak Samhita New Edition (carakasamhitaonline.com) cites the threefold general cause at Sutra 11/43, Sutra 20/5, Sutra 28/7 and Nidana 1/3
Standard-numbering locations where asatmyendriyartha-samyoga appears alongside prajnaparadha and parinama. This is a pointer, not a quoted locus, and is not counted as one in the locus audit in gatheringNotes. A dedicated page for this term was sought at carakasamhitaonline and returned HTTP 404, which is itself worth recording.
UNSOURCED: a claim carried over from gathering that Ashtanga Hridaya and Ashtanga Sangraha reproduce the same threefold cause with the same four modes of yoga
Nothing, as it stands. No edition of either text was consulted, no chapter and verse was located and nothing is quoted, so under this project's no-quote-no-citation rule this entry is not a classical reference and must not be counted as one or published as one. It is kept here, marked unsourced, rather than deleted, so that the claim is visible as an unverified one and can be checked or dropped at audit. The corresponding gap is stated in notKnown.
What the research actually shows
Every paper located for this concept, with what it measured and what it does and does not establish. The assessment is ours.
Untitled
The searches actually run, with their strings, databases, dates and counts. Run 2026-10-06 against the NCBI E-utilities esearch endpoint. db=pubmed: 'asatmyendriyartha' 0 records; 'asatmendriyartha' 0; 'asatmya' 0; 'indriyartha' 1 record (PMID 23723664), unrelated to this etiological category. db=pmc, which searches full text rather than title, abstract and MeSH: 'asatmyendriyartha' 3 records (PMC3331430, PMC3336277, PMC3336657); 'asatmendriyartha' 2 (PMC11831738, PMC6521746); 'asatmya' 16; 'indriyartha' 7. Five of the compound hits were retrieved and read in full.
How much it shows. This entry replaces an earlier flat assertion that the term 'does not appear in PubMed at all', which the critic was right to flag and which these searches falsify. The accurate statement is narrower and has two halves. The compound is absent from the fields PubMed itself indexes: a db=pubmed search returns nothing for any of the four transliterations tried, and the 1981 Ancient Science of Life paper that discusses the category at length has a PubMed abstract that does not contain the word. The compound is present in the full text of PubMed-indexed journals, which only a PMC search reaches. The five records read in full (PMC3331430, PMC3336277, PMC3336657, PMC6521746, PMC11831738) use the compound as a label in an introduction or a discussion; none defines it operationally, measures it, or treats it as a variable. Three of those five are now cited individually below. This is a bounded search: four transliterations, two databases, one date. Diacritic forms, hyphenated and space-separated variants, Devanagari, AYUSH Research Portal, DHARA and Google Scholar were not searched, so this record makes no claim about what a wider search would return.
Untitled · 2017 · doi:10.7897/2277-4572.06562
Compiles the classical material on asatmyendriyartha-samyoga and restates it.
How much it shows. Conceptual review in a non-indexed Ayurvedic journal. No data, no method section, no outcome. Representative of the whole available literature on this term.
Untitled · 2023 · doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2023.v05i02.2559
Argues that asatmyendriyartha-samyoga is a major cause of contemporary lifestyle disorders.
How much it shows. Narrative review in a non-indexed multidisciplinary journal. The claim is asserted, not tested. No exposure measurement, no comparison group.
Untitled · 2021 · doi:10.46607/iamj09p5042021
Applies the category to headphone use as an instance of atiyoga of hearing.
How much it shows. Conceptual paper in a non-indexed journal. Interesting as an illustration of how the framework is applied to modern exposures, but it generates no audiometric or any other data.
The association between screen time exposure and myopia in children and adolescents: a meta-analysis. · BMC Public Health · 2024 · PMID 38890613
Meta-analysis reporting an association between screen time exposure and myopia in children and adolescents.
How much it shows. Real empirical meta-analysis of observational studies, with the usual limitations of that design (confounding by outdoor time, heterogeneous exposure measurement, publication bias). Included strictly as an outside comparator: it shows that a specific sense-exposure to disease link is measurable when the exposure is defined and quantified. It was not designed around the Ayurvedic scheme, does not test it, and does not validate it.
Association of physical activity, sedentary behaviour, sleep and myopia in children and adolescents: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis. · BMC Public Health · 2025 · PMID 40170130
Dose-response meta-analysis of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep in relation to myopia.
How much it shows. Empirical systematic review with dose-response modelling. Cited as a comparator to make the contrast concrete: the modern literature that does study sensory exposure quantifies dose and models a response curve, whereas the classical scheme offers only ordinal categories of too much, too little and wrong, with no thresholds.
The psychosomatic disorders and their management in ayurveda. · Anc Sci Life · 1981 · PMID 22556460
That the category has been read, in a PubMed-indexed journal, as a classification of stress factors, with the perception itself (asatmya indriya buddhi) as the step that disturbs the manasa doshas and then the sharira doshas.
How much it shows. Theoretical paper, 1981, no data, no method, no outcome. Quoted here for two purposes and no others. It is direct evidence for the corrected search statement above, since it is the clearest case of the compound sitting in PMC full text while being absent from the PubMed abstract of the same record. And the word 'excellent' in the quote is the author's appraisal, carried here as the author's and not endorsed. Transliteration in the quote is the paper's own, including 'that this an excellent', which is as printed.
Ayurveda describes three categories of etiological factors viz. 1. Asatmyendriyartha Samyoga, 2. Prajnaparadha, 3. Parinama. A critical examination of the nature of these three categories of aetiological factors would indicate that this an excellent classification of stress factors which are responsible for stress and psychosomatic diseases.
Lifestyle - A Common Denominator for the Onset and Management of Migraine Headache: Complementing Traditional Approaches with Scientific Evidence. · Int J Yoga · 2019 · PMID 31143023
That the application of the category to specific modern sensory exposures is made in a PubMed-indexed journal and not only in non-indexed Ayurvedic ones.
How much it shows. Narrative review. The sentence quoted is an assertion referenced to a classical textbook; the paper measures no exposure and reports no migraine outcome against one. Cited for the fact that the claim is made in indexed literature, not as evidence that the claim is true. 'starring' is as printed and presumably 'staring'.
Asatmendriyartha samyoga (improper stimulation of sense organs) is considered an important factor for trigger of diseases as Ayurveda considers the sense organs to be the route to the brain. Constant glare, starring, bright light, loud noise, certain types of smell could trigger migraine.
Prevalence and global estimates of unsafe listening practices in adolescents and young adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. · BMJ Glob Health · 2022 · PMID 36379592
Pooled prevalence of exposure to unsafe listening from personal listening devices of 23.81 percent (95 percent CI 18.99 to 29.42) across 33 studies and 19,046 individuals aged 12-34, with a modelled 48.20 percent for loud entertainment venues and a global estimate of 0.67 to 1.35 billion young people potentially at risk of hearing loss.
How much it shows. Systematic review and meta-analysis, searched 2000-2021. An outside comparator, included because the record already carries a non-indexed Ayurvedic paper applying atiyoga of hearing to headphone use, and the comparison is the point: this review defines the exposure by intensity threshold and duration and reports a prevalence with an interval, which is what the classical ordinal categories do not do. It was not designed around the Ayurvedic scheme, does not test it and does not validate it. The adjacency between 'unsafe listening' and atiyoga is this record's translation, not Charaka's.
Occupational noise-induced hearing loss in China: a systematic review and meta-analysis. · BMJ Open · 2020 · PMID 32988950
In 71,865 workers exposed to a mean 98.6 dB(A) for a mean 9.9 years, prevalence of occupational noise-induced hearing loss of 21.3 percent, with noise level, exposure duration and age each carrying their own odds ratios (reported as 5.63, 1.75 and 1.35 for high-frequency loss) and complex noise worse than Gaussian noise at OR 1.95.
How much it shows. Systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies, with the confounding and heterogeneity limitations of that design and a single-country evidence base. An outside comparator only. It is the dose-response half of the noise adjacency, where the BMJ Global Health review is the exposure-prevalence half. Again: the mapping of this literature onto atiyoga of shabda is this record's translation and not a claim the classical text makes.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, Asatmyendriyartha-samyoga (unwholesome contact of the senses with their objects)
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/concept/asatmyendriyartha-samyoga/,
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Data exported 2026-10-08.
Educational reference only. This page describes what a body of theory claims and how well it is evidenced. Nothing here is advice, and nothing here describes how any condition should be treated.