# Shodhana and Shamana (purification versus pacification) > Canonical version of this page: https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/concept/shodhana-shamana/ ## How much weight this concept bears The distinction rests on classical exegesis, and its single most testable claim has not been tested in anything found in the searches recorded in gatheringNotes. Charaka Su.16.20 asserts that doshas subdued by fasting and digestives may recur while those evacuated by shodhana do not, and Su.16.21 justifies it by a simile about tree roots rather than by any observation of relapse. That claim is a relapse-rate claim and would be straightforward to examine with a follow-up period, yet none of the comparative studies located includes one. The empirical literature located consists of very small unblinded comparisons, ten to twenty patients per arm, in which shodhana arms are additionally given shamana drugs so the two cannot be separated, with outcomes on symptom grades this record could not find validated. A 2026 registered protocol from an Ayurvedic university states plainly that the effect of seasonal purification on healthy individuals remains a gray area, which is a fair summary. CORRECTED 2026-10-06, on criticFindings.overclaimed item 2. The 2026-09-19 version of this paragraph said there is no operational definition of when a patient is shodhana-eligible versus shamana-eligible. That conflated 'not validated' with 'not stated', and it was contradicted by this record's own citations. The criteria are stated, enumerated and operational. Charaka Siddhi Sthana 2 is built as a pravritti and nivritti list for each of the five procedures in turn, opening with avamyas tavat, 'those not to be given emesis are', and closing each pair with sesas tu vamyah, 'the rest are fit', so eligibility is defined by exclusion. Charaka Su.16.13-16, a passage this record already quoted but had mis-addressed, lists the signs of bahudosha and concludes that for such a patient purification is beneficial, upward or downward, yathadosam yathabalam. Ashtanga Hridaya Su.14.12-14 allocates patients between samshodhana, pachana-dipana and restraint of hunger and thirst by ordinal tiers of body bulk and strength. Sushruta's Sutrasthana gives contraindication lists for alkali, cautery and bloodletting, and at Chapter XII makes the physician's checklist explicit: the seat of the disease, the patient's strength, the marmas, the nature of the malady and the season. And the categories are not merely historical: a registered 2026 trial screens its participants for being vamanarha and virechanarha and for madhyama koshtha by questionnaire. What is actually missing is narrower and worse. Not one term in any of those lists is given a measurable definition. Nothing in the retrieved passages says where atisthula begins, how durbala is distinguished from merely weak, or what instrument assesses koshtha; the 2026 protocol's koshtha questionnaire is unnamed and no validation of it is cited. No source located reports agreement between physicians applying these lists to the same patient. The lists also do not agree with each other: Siddhi Sthana 2.8 contraindicates emesis for the atisthula while Ashtanga Hridaya 14.12 directs samshodhana at those in whom sthaulya is in excess, and no retrieved source reconciles them. CORRECTED 2026-10-06, on criticFindings.overclaimed item 1. The 2026-09-19 version said no classical text gives numeric thresholds for any of the variables the choice turns on. That was an unbounded negative about the whole corpus generalised from a reading that had never opened Siddhi Sthana, and it was false against a volume already on disk. Charaka Si.1.13-15 grades emesis and purgation by counted bouts, four, six and eight for emesis and ten, twenty and thirty for purgation, by prastha multiples, and by terminal product, excluding the first two or three faecal bouts from the count. Si.1.25 prescribes anuvasana basti in integers keyed to the dominant dosha, one or three for kapha, five or seven for pitta, nine or eleven for vata, in odd numbers. Sushruta Ci.XXXV grades basti pipe length and asthapana volume by the patient's age, two, four, eight and twelve prasritas, and its memorable verse ties the increase to age, strength and bodily capacity. These are real numbers. Two things keep them from being thresholds for the choice this record is about. They are dose and adequacy rules inside an already chosen course of treatment, not rules for choosing between shodhana and shamana. And the prasrita is defined in the main text as what the patient's own palms will hold, so even the measured unit is indexed to the individual body rather than being an absolute volume. Beyond that, there is no biomarker of adequate purification reported in anything located, and no reliability data on either the clinical completion signs or the counted and measured ones. The doctrine is also not stable across the classical corpus: Charaka makes shodhana and shamana the primary fork, Sushruta makes them two of four, and Vagbhata subordinates both to langhana, this last now quoted in the Sanskrit at AH Su.14.4 rather than reported from a web summary. A reference work should record the distinction as a well-attested organising scheme of the tradition, with eligibility and dosing rules that are detailed, quantified in places, mutually inconsistent in places, and unvalidated throughout, whose central empirical claim is untested. Every negative in this paragraph is a statement about the searches recorded in gatheringNotes and not about the field. Shodhana and shamana name the two basic ways Ayurveda claims a disturbed dosha can be dealt with: expelled from the body by an eliminative procedure, or brought back to normal state in situ by diet, drug, fasting and regimen. The doctrine attaches a specific and falsifiable-sounding claim to the distinction: doshas subdued by fasting and digestive measures may be aggravated again, whereas doshas evacuated by purification do not recur. Sushruta adds diet and conduct as two further co-equal factors alongside the pair, and Vagbhata reorganises the whole scheme by making shodhana a subtype of langhana rather than its opposite. The choice between the two in any given case is said to turn on the strength of the patient, the strength and stage of the dosha, the season, and the presence or absence of ama. Quantified rules do exist in the passages retrieved for this record, and they sit at the level of dose and of adequacy rather than at the level of the choice itself: Charaka's Siddhi Sthana grades emesis and purgation by counted bouts and by measured volume, prescribes anuvasana basti in counts keyed to which dosha is dominant, and Sushruta grades basti pipe dimensions and asthapana volumes by the patient's age. What no retrieved passage supplies is a measurable definition of the terms the choice turns on, which is a narrower and different point from the one the 2026-09-19 version of this record made. ## At a glance | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Subject area | Principles of treatment | | Domain, as recorded | treatment-principles | | Contested questions | 5 | | Stated as not known | 11 | | Classical citations | 15, 14 quoting the text | | Research papers assessed | 5 | | 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. ### Is shamana genuinely less durable than shodhana? This is contested. - Charaka Su.16.20 asserts it directly and it is repeated throughout the later tradition and modern Ayurvedic writing as settled. Quoted and addressed in this record, standard numbering confirmed in the Sanskrit. - No study located in the searches recorded in gatheringNotes measures relapse after shodhana versus after shamana with a follow-up period, so the assertion is supported, within what this record has read, only by classical authority and analogy. - Practitioner-facing sources sometimes soften the claim to 'less likely to recur' rather than 'cannot recur', without flagging that this weakens the text. No such source is cited in this record, so this position is UNCITED and must not be promoted to a published claim. - ADDED 2026-10-06. Vagbhata's definition of shamana at AH Su.14.6, now quoted in the Sanskrit, cuts across the question rather than answering it: shamana is defined there as that which neither purifies the doshas nor stirs the settled ones but equalises the uneven (na sodhayati yad dosan saman nodirayaty api| samikaroti visaman). That is a statement about mechanism, not about durability, and no retrieved source joins it to the Charaka durability claim. ### Is shodhana the opposite of shamana, or a species of langhana that contains shamana measures as a sibling? This is contested. - Charaka's Sutrasthana 16 treats the two as the primary therapeutic fork. Quoted and addressed in this record. - Charaka's own Sutrasthana 22 lists the shodhana procedures and the shamana-type measures (pachana, fasting, exercise) together as the varieties of langhana, at Ca.Su.22.18, an address this record did not carry before 2026-10-06 and now does. - Vagbhata (Ashtanga Hridaya Su.14.4) resolves this in favour of the second reading, making shodhana and shamana the two subtypes of langhana and subordinating the entire pair to the brimhana/langhana division. STATUS CHANGED 2026-10-06. Until this revision this position rested on an unnamed web summary whose verse attributions the record itself called unconfirmed, which is what criticFindings.citationRisk item 2 objected to. The Sanskrit has now been retrieved from GRETIL and quoted: sodhanam samanam ceti dvi-dha tatrapi langhanam ||4||. The position is now citable on its own terms. - CAVEAT ADDED 2026-10-06, so the resolution is not over-read. AH Su.14.3 names snehana, rukshana, svedana and stambhana in the same breath, so Vagbhata is subsuming the six under the two rather than discarding them, and AH Su.14.7 ends by saying brimhana is itself the shamana of vayu and of pitta-with-vayu, which crosses the two branches. No retrieved source addresses whether that leaves his scheme internally consistent. ### What counts as shodhana? This is contested. - Charaka restricts internal shodhana to emesis, purgation, nasal cleansing and the two enemas. Ca.Su.22.18's catuhprakara samshuddhi is the fourfold form; the five-procedure enumeration is at Siddhi Sthana 2, whose chapter structure this record has retrieved. - Sushruta, as glossed in BHISHAGRATNA'S OWN FOOTNOTE at Vol I page 11 and not in Sushruta's text, includes bloodletting internally and counts surgery, cautery, alkali and plasters as external shodhana. Re-read 2026-10-06 and the attribution tightened: this is the translator's voice, flagged because absorbing it as doctrine is one of the three systematic defects established across this project's citations and this record had committed it in its components list. - Vagbhata's five explicitly include bloodletting. CONFIRMED FROM THE SANSKRIT 2026-10-06 at AH Su.14.5: nirtiho vamanam kaya-siro-reko 'sra-visrutih, that is niruha, vamana, purgation of the body, purgation of the head, and asra-visruti, the letting of blood. Until this revision this was reported from a web summary. There is no reconciliation of these three lists in anything retrieved for this record. ### Should shamana be given after shodhana as a matter of course? This is contested. - Several clinical studies combine them as standard sequence, implying the tradition treats shamana as consolidation. Both comparative trials in this record's modern array do so: PMID 23559794 Group B and PMID 24049408 in both arms. - Charaka Su.16.20 read strictly implies shodhana alone should suffice for durability, which would make routine follow-on shamana redundant. - No source located in the searches recorded in gatheringNotes addresses the tension. Note also that the strongest reported result in PMID 23559794 is the combined arm and the weakest is shamana alone, which is consistent with consolidation but equally consistent with two active treatments summing, and that trial cannot distinguish the two. ### Are the classical shodhana-eligibility lists mutually consistent? This is contested. - Charaka Siddhi Sthana 2.8 lists atisthula and atikrsa among the avamya, those not to be given emesis. Quoted in the Sanskrit in this record. - Ashtanga Hridaya Su.14.12 directs samshodhana at those in whom sthaulya, bala, pitta and kapha are in excess (tatra samsodhanaih sthaulya-bala-pitta-kaphadhikan). Quoted in the Sanskrit in this record. - The tension may be only apparent. Charaka's term is ati-sthula and Vagbhata's is sthaulya-adhika, and Charaka's exclusion is specific to vamana while Vagbhata's indication is for samshodhana generally, so a reading on which Charaka excludes only the extreme case from emesis while Vagbhata addresses the merely excessive case with purification in general would dissolve it. NO RETRIEVED SOURCE SAYS THIS. It is set out here as the obvious candidate reconciliation precisely so that it is not mistaken for one that has been found in a text. - No commentarial source was retrieved for this question. Chakrapani on Siddhi Sthana 2 and Arunadatta or Hemadri on Ashtanga Hridaya 14 were not consulted and no quotable public-domain English for any of them was sought. ## What is not known Stated rather than left out. Where a negative has actually been searched for rather than assumed, the entry says so. - The relapse rate after shodhana versus after shamana for any condition. This is the doctrine's own central claim and no study located in the searches recorded in gatheringNotes measures it; none of the comparative trials retrieved includes a follow-up period at all. Stated as a fact about those searches, not about the field. - REWRITTEN 2026-10-06 on criticFindings.overclaimed item 2. The 2026-09-19 version said no criteria determine shodhana eligibility expressed as anything measurable, and that 'strength of the patient and strength of the dosha' has no instrument. The first half was wrong and has gone: the criteria exist and are enumerated at Ca.Si.2.8, 2.10 and 2.13, Ca.Su.16.13-16, AH.Su.14.12-14 and in Sushruta's Sutrasthana XI, XII and XIV, all now cited and quoted in this record. The second half survives and is the real gap. No retrieved passage gives a measurable definition of any term in those lists: not atisthula, not durbala, not bahudosha, not samvrtakostha, not the bala the Sushruta memorable verse at Ci.XXXV makes the dose depend on. The lists are categorical and the terms are left to the physician's judgment. - REWRITTEN 2026-10-06 on criticFindings.overclaimed item 1. The 2026-09-19 version asked whether any marker of adequate purification exists 'other than the clinical signs listed in Ch.Su.16.17-19', which was wrong because this record had never opened Siddhi Sthana. Charaka Si.1.13-15 gives three further completion criteria: counted bouts, a measured volume in prastha multiples, and a terminal product, pitta for emesis and kapha for purgation. What remains not known is whether any of the four criteria predicts any outcome, whether they agree with each other in a given patient, whether the clinical signs are reliably scored between observers, and whether any physiological or biochemical marker exists; PMID 42748372 proposes to measure three serum markers but has reported no results. - Whether the benefit seen in combined shodhana-plus-shamana arms comes from the shodhana, the shamana, the dietary regimen, the samsarjana krama, or the extended practitioner contact. Both comparative trials retrieved here give shamana to the shodhana arm, so neither can separate them. - Which of the three classical architectures (Charaka's fork, Sushruta's four factors, Vagbhata's subordination to langhana) modern practice actually follows, and whether practitioners are aware they differ. Nothing located addresses it. - Whether shodhana carries harms in specific populations that would offset its claimed durability advantage. The classical texts describe over- and under-administration symptoms in detail, including at Ca.Si.1.16-17 for emesis and in Sushruta's contraindication lists, but no modern comparative safety data for the choice was located in the searches recorded in gatheringNotes. - ADDED 2026-10-06 on criticFindings.missing item 1. Nidana parivarjana has no classical address in this record. It is carried as a component and as a position in a contested item with nothing behind it. The finding pointed at Sushruta's Uttara Tantra as the usual locus; that volume was retrieved and searched in full and no such passage was found there. See findingResolutions missing[0] for the exact queries, and stillOpen. The negative is a statement about those queries and that volume, not about the corpus: Charaka's Nidanasthana, Vimanasthana and Chikitsasthana, Madhava Nidana, and the Sanskrit of Sushruta were not searched for it. - ADDED 2026-10-06. Whether Charaka's contraindication of emesis for the atisthula at Si.2.8 and Vagbhata's indication of samshodhana for the sthaulya-adhika at AH.Su.14.12 are reconcilable. No retrieved source addresses it and no commentary was consulted. See contested item 5. - ADDED 2026-10-06. What instrument the classical eligibility categories are operationalised with in current practice. PMID 42748372 screens for vamanarha, virechanarha and madhyama koshtha 'as assessed using a questionnaire' and names no questionnaire and cites no validation of one in its abstract; the full text was not retrieved. - ADDED 2026-10-06. Whether the prasrita, which Sushruta Ci.XXXV defines in its main text as what the patient's own palms will hold, has ever been standardised or its variation between patients measured. Bhishagratna's footnote offers an absolute equivalence in palas and tolas, but that is his gloss and the main text declines it. - REVISED 2026-10-20. Samsarjana krama. The regimen is no longer unquoted: the samsarjana-krama lexicon entry quotes Charaka Su. 15.16 (opening clause), Kaviratna's English of the full diet sequence and a fragment of Siddhi Sthana 1.11-12, and the component gloss now points there. Still not known: the full Sanskrit of Su. 15.16 in a numbered edition, and any passage or study bearing on the assertion that the outcome of shodhana depends on the regimen. ## The terms this concept is built from | Term | What it names | | --- | --- | | [Shodhana](https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/shodhana/) | Eliminative or purificatory treatment: measures that expel aggravated doshas from the body rather than normalising them in place. | | [Shamana](https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/shamana/) | Pacificatory or palliative treatment: measures that return the aggravated doshas to normal state without evacuating them. | | [Nidana parivarjana](https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/nidana-parivarjana/) | Withdrawal of the causative factor. UNSOURCED. Described in the secondary literature as a third limb alongside the pair, but no classical passage for it has been retrieved for this record, and the 2026-09-19 version's 'counted by several authorities as a third limb' named no authority. Not to be counted or published as an addressed component. See notKnown and findingResolutions missing[0]. | | Urdhva and adhah (anuloma) shodhana | Charaka's division of eliminative treatment by direction of expulsion, upward (emesis) and downward (purgation and enema). | | Bahih and antah shodhana (Bhishagratna's gloss) | Division of purification into external (surgery, cautery, alkali, plasters) and internal (emesis, purgation, enema, bloodletting). CORRECTED 2026-10-06: this is Bhishagratna's own footnote at Vol I page 11, keyed to the four-factor sentence of Sushruta Sutrasthana 1, not a division printed in Sushruta's text. The 2026-09-19 version called it 'Sushruta's division', which is the translator's voice absorbed as doctrine. | | The seven shamana measures (Vagbhata) | Pachana, dipana, kshut (fasting), trut (fluid restriction), vyayama (exercise), atapa (sun), maruta (air), as listed at Ashtanga Hridaya Sutrasthana 14.7. Now quoted in the Sanskrit rather than reported from a web summary. | | [Samsarjana krama](https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/samsarjana-krama/) | The graded re-feeding regimen that follows shodhana. The regimen itself is quoted in the samsarjana-krama lexicon entry: the opening clause of Charaka Su. 15.16 in Sanskrit, and Kaviratna's English of the same passage (his printed 18), which runs from thin gruel through mudga soup and meat broth to the usual diet after a week. Charaka Siddhi Sthana 1.11-12 gives its rationale, agni after shodhana kindled gradually like a small fire, quoted there as a fragment. The 2026 protocol at PMID 42748372 states that its participants received it. Whether the outcome of shodhana depends on it is not addressed by anything quoted in this record. | | Langhana / brimhana frame | The six-fold upakrama scheme within which both shodhana and shamana are located as depleting measures. | ## 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 (Kaviratna translation, 1896-1913) Sutrasthana 16 (Chikitsaprabhritiya):16.20 (standard Trikamji numbering); Kaviratna prints 17, checked against the source > The faults of the system, if subjugated by fasts and Pachanas, may reappear. If subjugated by correctives, they cannot reappear. tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna The central and most load-bearing claim of the whole distinction: shamana is held to be non-durable, shodhana durable. NUMBERING. Two numbering systems are recorded separately and neither is presented as verifying the other. Kaviratna prints his own aphorism number AFTER the aphorism in his English text; the standard number is the Trikamji-based numbering of the verse-numbered Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, whose English is in copyright and is not quoted anywhere in this record. Attaching a third-party edition's number to Kaviratna's English and calling it 'confirmed', which the 2026-09-19 version of this record did, is an edition splice: a reader checking the citation in the quoted edition will not find that number on the page. What is asserted here is the Sanskrit verse number, read in the Sanskrit; Kaviratna's printed number is recorded alongside as his, so a reader can find the passage in either edition. Here the Sanskrit reads दोषाः कदाचित् कुप्यन्ति जिता लङ्घनपाचनैः| जिताः संशोधनैर्ये तु न तेषां पुनरुद्भवः||२०|| दोषाणां च द्रुमाणां च मूलेऽनुपहते सति| रोगाणां प्रसवानां च गतानामागतिर्ध्रुवा (IAST: dosah kadacit kupyanti jita langhanapacanaih| jitah samsodhanairye tu na tesam punarudbhavah||20||), read at carakasamhitaonline.com, index.php?title=Chikitsaprabhritiya_Adhyaya, under the heading 'Prevention of recurrence of disease'. Kaviratna's own printed marker after 'they cannot reappear' reads 'f 1 7' in the OCR of BIUSante_47357, that is his aphorism 17 with his footnote dagger, an offset of three behind standard in this chapter rather than the one-behind offset this project had generalised from Chikitsasthana 15 and Vimanasthana 5 and 8. Quote located once in BIUSante_47357; a second occurrence of the opening words at a later point in the volume is the same sentence reprinted, not a different passage, and the main text is identified by the surrounding aphorisms and by Kaviratna's printed 17. Source: https://archive.org/stream/BIUSante_47357/BIUSante_47357_djvu.txt ### Charaka Samhita (Kaviratna translation, 1896-1913) Sutrasthana 16 (Chikitsaprabhritiya):16.21 (standard Trikamji numbering); Kaviratna's printed marker reads '1' in this OCR, incomplete, checked against the source > If the roots be not exterminated of faults and trees, and of such diseases as have the tendency to appear and spread, then, even if they temporarily disappear, they are sure to make their reappearance. tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna The analogical justification offered for 16.20. The argument is by botanical simile, not by observation of relapse rates. NUMBERING. Two numbering systems are recorded separately and neither is presented as verifying the other. Kaviratna prints his own aphorism number AFTER the aphorism in his English text; the standard number is the Trikamji-based numbering of the verse-numbered Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, whose English is in copyright and is not quoted anywhere in this record. Attaching a third-party edition's number to Kaviratna's English and calling it 'confirmed', which the 2026-09-19 version of this record did, is an edition splice: a reader checking the citation in the quoted edition will not find that number on the page. What is asserted here is the Sanskrit verse number, read in the Sanskrit; Kaviratna's printed number is recorded alongside as his, so a reader can find the passage in either edition. The Sanskrit reads dosanam ca drumanam ca mule'nupahate sati| roganam prasavanam ca gatanamagatirdhruva||21||, read at carakasamhitaonline.com under the same heading as 16.20. Kaviratna's printed marker after 'sure to make their reappearance' is rendered as a bare '1' in the OCR of BIUSante_47357; it follows his 17 and so is consistent with 18, but the second digit is lost and no Kaviratna number is asserted for this aphorism. Source: https://archive.org/stream/BIUSante_47357/BIUSante_47357_djvu.txt ### Charaka Samhita (Kaviratna translation, 1896-1913) Sutrasthana 16 (Chikitsaprabhritiya):16.17-16.19 (standard Trikamji numbering); Kaviratna prints 14 to 16, his trailing digit not reliably resolvable in this OCR, checked against the source > The symptoms of one whose stomach has been corrected or purified are the increase of the digestive fire; alleviation of all diseases, the normal action of all organs; a happy state of the senses, the mind, and the understanding; a healthy complexion, strength, growth, children and virility. Decrepitude comes over such a man after a long time. Longevity becomes his, and that long life is passed in freedom from disease. tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna The claimed benefits of successful shodhana, and part of the criteria by which a practitioner is meant to judge that purification was adequate. The criteria in THIS passage are wholly clinical and subjective; they are not the only completion criteria in the corpus, and the 2026-09-19 version of this record wrongly implied they were. See Ca.Si.1.13-16, added, which grades adequacy by counted bouts, by measured volume and by terminal product as well as by clinical signs. NUMBERING. Two numbering systems are recorded separately and neither is presented as verifying the other. Kaviratna prints his own aphorism number AFTER the aphorism in his English text; the standard number is the Trikamji-based numbering of the verse-numbered Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, whose English is in copyright and is not quoted anywhere in this record. Attaching a third-party edition's number to Kaviratna's English and calling it 'confirmed', which the 2026-09-19 version of this record did, is an edition splice: a reader checking the citation in the quoted edition will not find that number on the page. What is asserted here is the Sanskrit verse number, read in the Sanskrit; Kaviratna's printed number is recorded alongside as his, so a reader can find the passage in either edition. The Sanskrit reads एवं विशुद्धकोष्ठस्य कायाग्निरभिवर्धते| व्याधयश्चोपशाम्यन्ति प्रकृतिश्चानुवर्तते||१७|| इन्द्रियाणि मनोबुद्धिर्वर्णश्चास्य प्रसीदति| बलं पुष्टिरपत्यं च वृषता चास्य जायते||१८|| जरां कृच्छ्रेण लभते चिरं जीवत्यनामयः| तस्मात् संशोधनं काले युक्तियुक्तं पिबेन्नरः||१९||, read at carakasamhitaonline.com under the heading 'Benefits of purification therapy'. Kaviratna's printed marker after 'judicious advice' reads "14'10" in the OCR of BIUSante_47357: the leading 14 is legible, the trailing number is not reliably resolvable, and the offset of three established at 16.20 in this chapter implies 16. Source: https://archive.org/stream/BIUSante_47357/BIUSante_47357_djvu.txt ### Charaka Samhita (Kaviratna translation, 1896-1913) Sutrasthana 16 (Chikitsaprabhritiya):16.13-16.16 (standard Trikamji numbering); Kaviratna prints 10 to 13, checked against the source > Correction, which is of two kinds, viz, Urddhya and Anulomya, to be beneficial, should be administered according to the nature or strength of the faults enumerated above and according to the strength or weakness of the patient. tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna Shodhana is divided by direction, and its dosing is explicitly made relative to dosha strength and patient strength with no stated scale. ADDRESS ADDED 2026-10-06, and the 2026-09-19 version's stated reason for withholding one was false. That version said the verse marker at this point was OCR-damaged and the number could not be independently confirmed. In BIUSante_47357 the marker after 'according to the strength or weakness of the patient' is legible as "*10'13", that is Kaviratna's aphorisms 10 to 13 with his footnote asterisk. The standard address is Ca.Su.16.13-16, read in the Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com under the heading 'Signs of excess aggravated dosha and indications of purification therapy': अविपाकोऽरुचिः स्थौल्यं पाण्डुता गौरवं क्लमः| पिडकाकोठकण्डूनां सम्भवोऽरतिरेव च||१३|| आलस्यश्रमदौर्बल्यं दौर्गन्ध्यमवसादकः| श्लेष्मपित्तसमुत्क्लेशो निद्रानाशोऽतिनिद्रता||१४|| तन्द्रा क्लैब्यमबुद्धित्वमशस्तस्वप्नदर्शनम्| बलवर्णप्रणाशश्च तृप्यतो बृंहणैरपि||१५|| बहुदोषस्य लिङ्गानि तस्मै संशोधनं हितम्| ऊर्ध्वं चैवानुलोमं च यथादोषं यथाबलम्||१६|| (IAST: avipākō'ruciḥ sthaulyaṁ pāṇḍutā gauravaṁ klamaḥ| piḍakākōṭhakaṇḍūnāṁ sambhavō'ratirēva ca||13|| ālasyaśramadaurbalyaṁ daurgandhyamavasādakaḥ| ślēṣmapittasamutklēśō nidrānāśō'tinidratā||14|| tandrā klaibyamabuddhitvamaśastasvapnadarśanam| balavarṇapraṇāśaśca tr̥pyatō br̥ṁhaṇairapi||15|| bahudōṣasya liṅgāni tasmai saṁśōdhanaṁ hitam| ūrdhvaṁ caivānulōmaṁ ca yathādōṣaṁ yathābalam||16||). 16.13-15 enumerate the signs of bahudosha and 16.16 concludes bahudosasya lingani tasmai samsodhanam hitam| urdhvam caivanulomam ca yathadosam yathabalam, that is: these are the signs of a patient with excess dosha, for whom purification is beneficial, upward or downward, according to the dosha and according to the strength. That makes this passage an indication rule as well as a dosing rule, and it is the passage that most directly contradicts the 2026-09-19 evidenceState claim that no operational definition of shodhana eligibility exists. NUMBERING. Two numbering systems are recorded separately and neither is presented as verifying the other. Kaviratna prints his own aphorism number AFTER the aphorism in his English text; the standard number is the Trikamji-based numbering of the verse-numbered Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, whose English is in copyright and is not quoted anywhere in this record. Attaching a third-party edition's number to Kaviratna's English and calling it 'confirmed', which the 2026-09-19 version of this record did, is an edition splice: a reader checking the citation in the quoted edition will not find that number on the page. What is asserted here is the Sanskrit verse number, read in the Sanskrit; Kaviratna's printed number is recorded alongside as his, so a reader can find the passage in either edition. Source: https://archive.org/stream/BIUSante_47357/BIUSante_47357_djvu.txt ### Charaka Samhita (Kaviratna translation, 1896-1913) Sutrasthana 22 (Langhanabrimhaniya):22.4 (standard Trikamji numbering); Kaviratna's marker is destroyed in this OCR and on the critic's reading of the printed page covers his 2-3, spanning standard 22.3-22.4, checked against the source > He is a true physician who knows the time when the administration should be resorted to of the courses of treatment called Langhana, Vring-hana, Rukshana, Snehana, Swedana, and Stambhana. tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna The six-fold upakrama scheme inside which shodhana and shamana sit, and the explicit framing of competence as knowing when, not what. THIS IS THE CLEAREST CASE OF THE EDITION SPLICE the critic identified, and the finding holds. The 2026-09-19 version said 'Verse number 22.4 confirmed against carakasamhitaonline.com'. Kaviratna prints no 22.4 beside this sentence. In BIUSante_47357 the marker after 'Even this (was what he said)' is OCR-destroyed, printing as '.**-*'; the critic reports the page reads 2-3, which this revision could not resolve from the OCR but which is consistent with everything round it, since Kaviratna's next markers run 4, 5, 6 for Agnivesha's questions and 7-9 for the six definitions. The sentence's standard address is nonetheless sound, read in the Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, index.php?title=Langhanabrimhaniya_Adhyaya: लङ्घनं बृंहणं काले रूक्षणं स्नेहनं तथा| स्वेदनं स्तम्भनं चैव जानीते यः स वै भिषक्||४|| (IAST: langhanam brmhanam kale ruksanam snehanam tatha| svedanam stambhanam caiva janite yah sa vai bhisak||4||). The preceding sentence of Kaviratna's English, 'The son of Atri, urging them to attend, addressed his six foremost of disciples', is standard 22.3 (tapahsvadhyayaniratanatreyah sisyasattaman| sadagnivesapramukhanuktavan paricodayan||3||) and is not quoted here, which is why Kaviratna's single marker covers two standard verses. NUMBERING. Two numbering systems are recorded separately and neither is presented as verifying the other. Kaviratna prints his own aphorism number AFTER the aphorism in his English text; the standard number is the Trikamji-based numbering of the verse-numbered Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, whose English is in copyright and is not quoted anywhere in this record. Attaching a third-party edition's number to Kaviratna's English and calling it 'confirmed', which the 2026-09-19 version of this record did, is an edition splice: a reader checking the citation in the quoted edition will not find that number on the page. What is asserted here is the Sanskrit verse number, read in the Sanskrit; Kaviratna's printed number is recorded alongside as his, so a reader can find the passage in either edition. Source: https://archive.org/stream/BIUSante_47357/BIUSante_47357_djvu.txt ### Charaka Samhita (Kaviratna translation, 1896-1913) Sutrasthana 22 (Langhanabrimhaniya):22.9-22.12a (standard Trikamji numbering); Kaviratna prints 7 to 9. CORRECTED 2026-10-06 from '22.9-22.11', checked against the source > Anything that lightens or attenuates (the aggravated humours and altered constituents) in the body has been said to be a Langhana. That which promotes nutrition and bulk of the body is known as Vring-hana. That which brings about dryness, and roughness and paleness is said to be Rukshana. That which leads to secretions of oily matter, softness of the body, and increase of impurities, is said to be Snehana. Anything that produces perspiration and destroys stiffness and heaviness and sensation of cold is said to be Swedana. That which constipates or stops the motion of such constituents of the body as are liquid, restless, and endued with motion, is said to be Stambhana. tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna The definitions of all six upakramas. Each is defined by its observable effect, not by mechanism, which is what allows shodhana procedures and simple fasting both to count as langhana. TWO CORRECTIONS 2026-10-06. First, the span is wrong at the far end and is corrected: standard 22.9 covers langhana, 22.10 brimhana and rukshana, 22.11 snehana and svedana, and the stambhana definition is the FIRST HALF of 22.12, read in the Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com where ...svedanam svedakarakam||11|| is immediately followed by stambhanam stambhayati yadgatimantam calam dhruvam. The quoted English includes the stambhana definition, so the span is 22.9-22.12a. This is the same correction already made in the chikitsa-sutra record, which quotes the same passage, and it was re-derived here from the Sanskrit rather than taken from that record. Second, 'Verse range 22.9-22.11 confirmed against carakasamhitaonline.com' is replaced by the dual-numbering statement. NUMBERING. Two numbering systems are recorded separately and neither is presented as verifying the other. Kaviratna prints his own aphorism number AFTER the aphorism in his English text; the standard number is the Trikamji-based numbering of the verse-numbered Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, whose English is in copyright and is not quoted anywhere in this record. Attaching a third-party edition's number to Kaviratna's English and calling it 'confirmed', which the 2026-09-19 version of this record did, is an edition splice: a reader checking the citation in the quoted edition will not find that number on the page. What is asserted here is the Sanskrit verse number, read in the Sanskrit; Kaviratna's printed number is recorded alongside as his, so a reader can find the passage in either edition. Kaviratna numbers the definitions 7-9, two behind standard, consistent with his not numbering the chapter's opening dialogue separately. TRAP RECORDED. The langhana definition sentence occurs twice in the Kaviratna volume, once in the main text of Lesson XXII as quoted here and once in a shortened form inside a translator's footnote in a later lesson that ends '- T.'. Both occurrences were located in BIUSante_47357. This quote is from the main text, identified by Kaviratna's printed 7-9 and by the surrounding dialogue with Agnivesha. Source: https://archive.org/stream/BIUSante_47357/BIUSante_47357_djvu.txt ### Charaka Samhita (Kaviratna translation, 1896-1913) Sutrasthana 22 (Langhanabrimhaniya):22.18 (standard Trikamji numbering); Kaviratna's printed marker reads '1 8' in this OCR and is not asserted, checked against the source > The four kinds of corrective processes (viz., administration of emetics, of purgatives, of errhines or cerebral purgatives, and dry enemata), as also bearing thirst and wind and the heat of the Sun, drinking the medicines called Pachana, fast, and physical exercise,—these are all included under Langhana. tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna The ten measures counted as langhana, which places the shodhana procedures and the shamana measures inside a single category. This is the textual basis for Vagbhata's later reorganisation. ADDRESS ADDED 2026-10-06, and the 2026-09-19 version's stated reason for withholding one was false. That version said the marker was OCR-damaged and was not independently confirmed; in BIUSante_47357 the digits are present, printing as 'included under Langhana^1 8'. They are not reliably resolvable: the marker follows a run of Kaviratna numbers ending at his 16 for the stambhana qualities, so it is either 17, which would hold the two-behind offset seen earlier in this chapter, or 18, which would not. No Kaviratna number is asserted. The standard address is sound and is read in the Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com: चतुष्प्रकारा संशुद्धिः पिपासा मारुतातपौ| पाचनान्युपवासश्च व्यायामश्चेति लङ्घनम्||१८|| (IAST: catuṣprakārā saṁśuddhiḥ pipāsā mārutātapau| pācanānyupavāsaśca vyāyāmaścēti laṅghanam||18||), that is: the fourfold purification, thirst, wind and sun, the digestives, fasting and exercise, these are langhana. Note that the Sanskrit counts seven heads which expand to ten when the fourfold samshuddhi is enumerated, which is how Kaviratna's English reaches ten. NUMBERING. Two numbering systems are recorded separately and neither is presented as verifying the other. Kaviratna prints his own aphorism number AFTER the aphorism in his English text; the standard number is the Trikamji-based numbering of the verse-numbered Sanskrit at carakasamhitaonline.com, whose English is in copyright and is not quoted anywhere in this record. Attaching a third-party edition's number to Kaviratna's English and calling it 'confirmed', which the 2026-09-19 version of this record did, is an edition splice: a reader checking the citation in the quoted edition will not find that number on the page. What is asserted here is the Sanskrit verse number, read in the Sanskrit; Kaviratna's printed number is recorded alongside as his, so a reader can find the passage in either edition. Source: https://archive.org/stream/BIUSante_47357/BIUSante_47357_djvu.txt ### Sushruta Samhita (Bhishagratna translation, 1907-1916), Vol. I Sutrasthana 1 (Vedotpatti):NONE ASSERTED. Bhishagratna prints no Sanskrit verse number beside this passage and no section number of his own in this chapter; see establishes, checked against the source > Samshodhanam (Cleansing), and Samshamanam (Pacification of the deranged or agitated bodily humours giving rise to the disease) and the regimen of diet and conduct are the four factors which should be duly employed in order to successfully cope with a disease. tr. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna Sushruta's version is a four-term scheme, not a two-term one. Located and re-read in the OCR of englishtranslati01susruoft, Chapter I (Vedotpatti), printed page 11, between the classification of diseases into agantuka, sharira, manasa and svabhavika and the sentence beginning 'Food is the principal factor'. The string occurs once in the volume. VERSE NUMBER: none is asserted and none can be. Bhishagratna prints no Sanskrit verse numbers anywhere in his translation, only his own section numbers, and in this chapter he prints no section number beside this passage either; the only locators on the page are the running chapter and page headers. A citation that mixed his numbering with a Sanskrit verse number would be the second of the three systematic defects established across this project's 782 citations. TRANSLATOR'S VOICE, flagged because it is the third of those defects and because this record committed it. The external/internal division of cleansing is NOT in Sushruta's text here. It is Bhishagratna's own footnote, marked with a dagger keyed to this sentence and printed at the foot of page 11, reading in part 'Cleansing (Samshodhanam) is of two kinds, viz. External and Internal. External purification consists in employing such measures as surgical operations, cauterisation of the affected part or organ, external use of alkaline preparations and medicated plasters, the internal one including such measures as exhibition of purgatives and emetics, application of intestinal enemas (Asthapanam) and blood-letting.' That is a translator's gloss and is recorded here as his, not as Sushruta's. The 2026-09-19 version described it correctly in this entry as 'Bhishagratna's attached note' but then carried it into the components list as 'Sushruta's division', which has been corrected. Source: https://archive.org/details/englishtranslati01susruoft ### Ashtanga Hridaya (Vagbhata) Sutrasthana 14 (Dvividhopakramaniya):14.1-14.7, checked against the source > upakramyasya hi dvi-tvād dvi-dhaivopakramo mataḥ | ekaḥ saṃtarpaṇas tatra dvitīyaś cāpatarpaṇaḥ || 1 || bṛṃhaṇo laṅghanaś ceti tat-paryāyāv udāhṛtau | bṛṃhaṇaṃ yad bṛhat-tvāya laṅghanaṃ lāghavāya yat || 2 || dehasya bhavataḥ prāyo bhaumāpam itarac ca te | snehanaṃ rūkṣaṇaṃ karma svedanaṃ stambhanaṃ ca yat || 3 || bhūtānāṃ tad api dvaidhyād dvitayaṃ nātivartate | śodhanaṃ śamanaṃ ceti dvi-dhā tatrāpi laṅghanam || 4 || yad īrayed bahir doṣān pañca-dhā śodhanaṃ ca tat | nirūho vamanaṃ kāya-śiro-reko 'sra-visrutiḥ || 5 || na śodhayati yad doṣān samān nodīrayaty api | samī-karoti viṣamān śamanaṃ tac ca sapta-dhā || 6 || pācanaṃ dīpanaṃ kṣut-tṛḍ-vyāyāmātapa-mārutāḥ | bṛṃhaṇaṃ śamanaṃ tv eva vāyoḥ pittānilasya ca || 7 || tr. NONE. Sanskrit text, not a translation. No English translation of this text is quoted in this record. Vagbhata's architecture, now quoted in the Sanskrit instead of reported from a secondary web summary. THE CRITIC'S FINDING HELD AND IS ANSWERED BY RETRIEVAL. The 2026-09-19 version carried this chapter from 'a retrieved chapter summary' whose verse attributions it admitted were 'reported rather than independently confirmed', while two contested items in this record leaned on those attributions to settle textual disputes. Every attribution it reported is now confirmed from the Sanskrit, so nothing had to be withdrawn, but it was being asserted on inadequate grounds until this revision. CHAPTER NUMBER confirmed independently of any summary: the GRETIL file is the Sutrasthana, whose own closing verse at 1.48 reads sutra-sthanam ime 'dhyayas trimsac charIram ucyate, thirty chapters; this is the fourteenth chapter marker in the file, and the variant-reading lines inside this block are tagged 14.14, 14.19, 14.23, 14.26, 14.29, 14.30, 14.31, 14.32, 14.34 and 14.35, which fixes the chapter number from inside the text. WHAT THE VERSES SAY, as this record reads the Sanskrit: 14.1, because the thing to be treated is two-fold the treatment is held to be two-fold, one santarpana and the second apatarpana; 14.2, brimhana and langhana are given as their synonyms, brimhana being for bulk and langhana for lightness; 14.3, snehana, rukshana, svedana and stambhana are also named here, so Vagbhata does not drop the six but subsumes them; 14.4, these too do not exceed the two-fold, and there too langhana is two-fold, shodhana and shamana (sodhanam samanam ceti dvi-dha tatrapi langhanam); 14.5, that which drives the doshas outward is shodhana and it is five-fold, niruha, vamana, kaya-reka, shiro-reka and asra-visruti, bloodletting named among the five; 14.6, that which neither purifies the doshas nor stirs the settled ones but equalises the uneven is shamana, and it is seven-fold; 14.7, pachana, dipana, kshut, trut, vyayama, atapa, maruta. This is a materially different architecture from Charaka's, in which shodhana and shamana are the primary fork. The verse 1 and verse 4 attributions the earlier version reported, the count of five with bloodletting among them, and the count of seven with exactly that membership, are all confirmed. LANGUAGE AND COPYRIGHT. The quote is the Sanskrit only; no English translation of Ashtanga Hridaya is quoted anywhere in this record, and the English above is this record's own working gloss of the Sanskrit, offered as a reading and not as a quoted translation. The Sanskrit text is not in copyright; GRETIL's transcription is distributed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and is attributed above. Diacritics are reproduced exactly as the file prints them, including its hyphenation of compounds. Source: http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/corpustei/sa_vAgbhaTa-aSTAGgahRdayasUtra.xml ### Ashtanga Hridaya (Vagbhata) Sutrasthana 14 (Dvividhopakramaniya):14.12-14.14, checked against the source > tatra saṃśodhanaiḥ sthaulya-bala-pitta-kaphādhikān | āma-doṣa-jvara-cchardir-atīsāra-hṛd-āmayaiḥ || 12 || vibandha-gauravodgāra-hṛl-lāsādibhir āturān | madhya-sthaulyādikān prāyaḥ pūrvaṃ pācana-dīpanaiḥ || 13 || ebhir evāmayair ārtān hīna-sthaulya-balādhikān | kṣut-tṛṣṇā-nigrahair doṣais tv ārtān madhya-balair dṛḍhān || 14 || Sanskrit mūla Vagbhata's allocation rule, which assigns patients to shodhana or to the milder shamana measures by graded tiers of body bulk and strength rather than by a binary test. As this record reads the Sanskrit: 14.12, with the purificatory measures treat those in whom sthaulya, bala, pitta and kapha are in excess, afflicted by ama-dosha, fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and heart disorders; 14.13, patients afflicted by obstruction, heaviness, eructation and nausea, and those of middling sthaulya and the like, generally first with pachana and dipana; 14.14, those afflicted by the same disorders but of lesser sthaulya and greater bala, by restraint of hunger and thirst, and those afflicted by the doshas who are of middling strength and firm. The tiers are ordinal (adhika, madhya, hina) and no quantity is attached to any of them, which is the precise shape of what this record can and cannot say about thresholds. This passage is relevant twice over: it is a stated, operational allocation rule, against the 2026-09-19 claim that no operational definition of shodhana eligibility exists; and it stands in tension with Charaka Siddhi Sthana 2.8, which lists atisthula among those for whom emesis is contraindicated. See contested item 5. LANGUAGE AND COPYRIGHT as in the preceding entry: Sanskrit only, English is this record's working gloss, GRETIL transcription CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Source: http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/corpustei/sa_vAgbhaTa-aSTAGgahRdayasUtra.xml ### Charaka Samhita (Sanskrit, Trikamji-based verse-numbered text) Siddhi Sthana 1 (Kalpana Siddhi):1.13-1.15, checked against the source > जघन्यमध्यप्रवरे तु वेगाश्चत्वार इष्टा वमने षडष्टौ||१३|| दशैव ते द्वित्रिगुणा विरेके प्रस्थस्तथा द्वित्रिचतुर्गुणश्च| पित्तान्तमिष्टं वमनं विरेकादर्धं कफान्तं च विरेकमाहुः||१४|| द्वित्रान् सविट्कानपनीय वेगान्मेयं विरेके वमने तु पीतम्|१५| || IAST as printed by the source: jaghanyamadhyapravarē tu vēgāścatvāra iṣṭā vamanē ṣaḍaṣṭau||13|| daśaiva tē dvitriguṇā virēkē prasthastathā dvitricaturguṇaśca| pittāntamiṣṭaṁ vamanaṁ virēkādardhaṁ kaphāntaṁ ca virēkamāhuḥ||14|| dvitrān saviṭkānapanīya vēgānmēyaṁ virēkē vamanē tu pītam|15| Sanskrit mūla Quantified grades of adequacy for emesis and purgation, which is the material that defeats the 2026-09-19 summary's claim that no classical text gives numeric thresholds, and which also narrows this record's own notKnown claim that the only completion criteria are the clinical signs at Ca.Su.16.17-19. As this record reads the Sanskrit: 1.13, for the lowest, middling and highest grades (jaghanya, madhya, pravara) the bouts desired in emesis are four, six and eight; 1.14, in purgation ten and twice and thrice that, and the prastha measure likewise two-, three- and four-fold, emesis being half of purgation, with pitta held to be the desired end of emesis and kapha of purgation; 1.15, in purgation the measure is counted after setting aside the first two or three bouts that contain faeces. So the chapter supplies a counted criterion, a measured-volume criterion and a terminal-product criterion. The commentarial names for these, vaigiki, maniki and antiki shuddhi, with laingiki for the clinical signs at 1.15-16, are NOT asserted here: they come from Chakrapani's Ayurvedadipika, which this revision did not retrieve, and no retrieved source prints them. WHAT THIS DOES NOT ESTABLISH. The prastha is a volume unit whose modern equivalence is supplied only by the in-copyright 2020 editors and is not asserted here. Nothing in the passage states that any of these three criteria predicts outcome, and nothing links any of them to the shodhana-versus-shamana choice, which is where the record's summary made its claim. LANGUAGE AND COPYRIGHT. The quote is the Sanskrit only. The page carries an English translation published in 2020 by the Charak Samhita Research, Training and Skill Development Centre, which is in copyright and is not quoted, paraphrased or relied on here; so are its editors' disease-identification tables and their modern volume conversions. The English in the establishes field below is this record's own working gloss of the Sanskrit, offered as a reading and not as a quoted translation. Diacritics are reproduced exactly as the source prints them, including its marking of e and o as long. Source: https://www.carakasamhitaonline.com/index.php?title=Kalpana_Siddhi ### Charaka Samhita (Sanskrit, Trikamji-based verse-numbered text) Siddhi Sthana 1 (Kalpana Siddhi):1.25, checked against the source **Quotation withheld:** a non-Sanskrit quote with no translator recorded, so it cannot be cleared. The passage is at https://www.carakasamhitaonline.com/index.php?title=Kalpana_Siddhi A numeric rule keyed directly to which dosha is involved, and therefore the single sharpest refutation of the 2026-09-19 summary's claim that no classical text gives numeric thresholds for the strength and stage of the dosha. As this record reads the Sanskrit: one, likewise three, in a kapha-born disorder; in a pitta-constituted one five or seven; in vata nine or eleven; the skilled physician should administer the bastis in odd numbers. The number prescribed is a plain integer and the index is the dosha, not the patient. WHAT THIS DOES NOT ESTABLISH. It is a dosing count for anuvasana basti within an already chosen course of treatment, not a rule for choosing shodhana over shamana, and no retrieved source states how a physician is to decide between one and three, or between nine and eleven, within each band. LANGUAGE AND COPYRIGHT. The quote is the Sanskrit only. The page carries an English translation published in 2020 by the Charak Samhita Research, Training and Skill Development Centre, which is in copyright and is not quoted, paraphrased or relied on here; so are its editors' disease-identification tables and their modern volume conversions. The English in the establishes field below is this record's own working gloss of the Sanskrit, offered as a reading and not as a quoted translation. Diacritics are reproduced exactly as the source prints them, including its marking of e and o as long. ### Charaka Samhita (Sanskrit, Trikamji-based verse-numbered text) Siddhi Sthana 2 (Panchakarmiya Siddhi):2.8, 2.10 and 2.13, checked against the source > 2.8: avamyāstāvat- kṣatakṣīṇātisthūlātikr̥śabālavr̥ddhadurbalaśrāntapipāsitakṣudhitakarmabhārādhvahatōpavāsamaithunādhyayanavyāyāmacintā-prasaktakṣāmagarbhiṇīsukumārasaṁvr̥takōṣṭhaduśchardanōrdhvaraktapittaprasaktacchardirūrdhvavātāsthāpitānuvāsitahr̥drōgōdāvartamūtrāghāta-plīhagulmōdarāṣṭhīlāsvarōpaghātatimiraśiraśaṅkhakarṇākṣiśūlārtāḥ||8|| || 2.10 (quoted whole): śēṣāstu vamyāḥ; viśēṣatastu pīnasakuṣṭhanavajvararājayakṣmakāsaśvāsagalagrahagalagaṇḍaślīpadamēhamandāgniviruddhājīrṇānnavisūcikālasakaviṣagarapītadaṣṭadigdhaviddhādhaḥśōṇitapittaprasēka (durnāma )hr̥llāsārōcakāvipākāpacyapasmārōnmādātisāraśōphapāṇḍurōgamukhapākaduṣṭastanyādayaḥślēṣmavyādhayō viśēṣēṇa mahārōgādhyāyōktāśca; ētēṣu hi Vamanṁ pradhānatamamityuktaṁkēdārasētubhēdē śālyādyaśōṣadōṣavināśavat||10|| || 2.13 (quoted whole): śēṣāstu virēcyāḥ; viśēṣatastukuṣṭhajvaramēhōrdhvaraktapittabhagandarōdarārśōbradhnaplīhagulmārbudagalagaṇḍagranthivisūcikālasakamūtrāghātakrimikōṣṭhavisarpa-pāṇḍurōgaśiraḥpārśvaśūlōdāvartanētrāsyadāhahr̥drōgavyaṅganīlikānētranāsikāsyasravaṇahalīmakaśvāsakāsakāmalā-pacyapasmārōnmādavātaraktayōnirētōdōṣataimiryārōcakāvipākacchardiśvayathūdaravisphōṭakādayaḥ pittavyādhayō viśēṣēṇamahārōgādhyāyōktāśca; ētēṣu hi virēcanaṁ pradhānatamamityuktamagnyupaśamē'gnigr̥havat||13|| Sanskrit mūla Explicit, enumerated eligibility and contraindication lists for the shodhana procedures. This is the citation that answers criticFindings.overclaimed item 2 and it is the critic's point exactly: these criteria are stated and operational, and unvalidated, which is a different and more interesting finding than 'no definition exists'. The chapter's own structure is a pravritti and nivritti list for each of the five procedures in turn: its retrieved contents run contra-indications of vamana, adverse effects when given in contra-indicated conditions, indications of vamana, then the same three for virechana, asthapana basti, anuvasana basti and shirovirechana. As this record reads the quoted Sanskrit: 2.8 opens avamyas tavat, 'those not to be given emesis are', and enumerates them in a single long compound whose elementary members include ksata, ksina, atisthula, atikrsa, bala, vrddha, durbala, sranta, pipasita, ksudhita, garbhini and samvrtakostha; 2.10 opens sesas tu vamyah, 'the rest are fit for emesis', and then names conditions for which it is especially indicated; 2.13 opens sesas tu virecyah and does the same for purgation. The decision rule is therefore stated by exclusion: define who must not receive the procedure, and the remainder are eligible. WHAT THIS DOES NOT ESTABLISH, and this is where the surviving gap sits. Not one term in the lists is given a measurable definition. Nothing says how durbala is distinguished from merely weak, where atisthula begins, or what instrument assesses samvrtakostha. No retrieved source reports agreement between physicians applying these lists to the same patient. ELISION DECLARED. The 2.10 and 2.13 quotes omit the enumerated disease-compound between the opening and closing clauses, marked by an ellipsis; the full strings were retrieved and read and the omitted material is a list of disease names, not reasoning. 2.8 is quoted whole. LANGUAGE AND COPYRIGHT. The quote is the Sanskrit only. The page carries an English translation published in 2020 by the Charak Samhita Research, Training and Skill Development Centre, which is in copyright and is not quoted, paraphrased or relied on here; so are its editors' disease-identification tables and their modern volume conversions. The English in the establishes field below is this record's own working gloss of the Sanskrit, offered as a reading and not as a quoted translation. Diacritics are reproduced exactly as the source prints them, including its marking of e and o as long. Source: https://www.carakasamhitaonline.com/index.php?title=Panchakarmiya_Siddhi ### Sushruta Samhita (Bhishagratna translation, 1907-1916), Vol. II Chikitsa Sthana XXXV:NONE ASSERTED; Bhishagratna's own section numbers 4, 5 and 6, printed at the end of each section, checked against the source > Dimensions of the pipe: - The length of the pipe of a Vasti should be made six fingers in respect of an infant of one year and eight and ten fingers in respect of a boy of eight and an adult of sixteen years respectively, the girth of its calibre being respectively equal to those of the small finger, the ring finger and the middle finger respectively in the three afore-named instances. ... The quantity of the fluid with which an Asthapana-Vasti should be charged is equal respectively to two, four, and eight Prasritas (in volume). A Prasrita measure being here equal to what can be contained in the hollow of the patient's own palms (in each particular case). 4. Memorable Verse: - The length of the pipe and the quantity of the fluid to charge with should be gradually increased with the progress of the patient's age and in consideration of his strength and bodily capacity. 5. The pipe of a Vasti in respect of an adult above twenty-five years of age, should be made twelve fingers in length ... The quantity of the fluid to charge with in the case of an Asthapana Vasti is twelve Prasritas. The length of the pipe in respect of persons above seventy years of age should be like that in the preceding case but the quantity of the fluid to charge with should be made as in the case of a youth of sixteen. 6. tr. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna A numeric dosing scale for enema, graded by the patient's age and explicitly tied by the chapter's own memorable verse to his strength and bodily capacity. This is the passage the critic named, and it holds: the 2026-09-19 summary's 'no classical text gives numeric thresholds for any of these' was false against a source already on disk. Located in the OCR of englishtranslati00susruoft at printed pages 591-593, under the running header 'Chap. XXXV.] CHIKITSA STHANAM', in Bhishagratna's sections 4, 5 and 6. VERSE NUMBER: none asserted. Bhishagratna prints no Sanskrit verse numbers anywhere in his translation; the trailing 4, 5 and 6 are his own section numbers and are recorded as his. A citation mixing the two systems would be the second systematic defect established across this project's citations. TRANSLATOR'S VOICE, flagged because it is the third such defect and it is live in this very passage. Bhishagratna's footnote on the same page reads 'A Prasrita measure is generally equal to two Palas, i.e., sixteen Tolas. But here it has the particular meaning as given in the text.' The pala and tola equivalence is his gloss and is NOT asserted here. The main text's own definition, quoted above, is that the prasrita is what the patient's own palms will hold. That matters for what this citation does and does not establish: the scale is numeric in the sense of counted units, and the unit itself is indexed to the individual patient's body, so it is not an absolute volume and cannot be read as one. The ellipses mark omitted material, all of it further pipe dimensions; the segments are consecutive passages of Bhishagratna's main text. Quote transcribed from the OCR; line-break hyphens closed and obvious OCR letter-errors corrected. No wording supplied from any other source. Source: https://archive.org/details/englishtranslati00susruoft ### Sushruta Samhita (Bhishagratna translation, 1907-1916), Vol. I Sutrasthana XI (Kshara-pakaka-vidhi), XII (Agni-karma-vidhi) and XIV (Shonita-varnaniya):NONE ASSERTED; Bhishagratna prints neither Sanskrit verse numbers nor section numbers in these chapters, checked against the source > Chap. XI: A weak person, an infant, an aged person, a man of timid disposition, a patient suffering from abdominal dropsy with general anasarca or from haemoptysis, a pregnant woman, a woman in her menses, a person suffering from an attack of high fever or urethral discharges, or emaciated with chronic inflammation of the lungs, or a person subjected to fits of fainting or abnormal thirst, or a person suffering from virile impotency ... should be deemed unfit for being cauterised with alkalis. ... Alkalis fail to produce any beneficial effect in a patient suffering from oedema of the limbs, or suffering from bone-ache, or laid up with a disease affecting the joints or the heart, or in a person of impaired appetite who has lost all relish for food, even when their use is otherwise indicated. ... Chap. XII: A physician, after having carefully considered the seat of the disease and judiciously ascertained the patient's strength and the situations of the Marmas (the vital parts of the patient's body), should resort to cauterisation with an eye to the nature of the malady and the then prevailing season of the year. ... A man of bilious temperament or with a quantity of bad blood lying stagnant and locked up in any part of his body, or of lax bowels, a person with any foreign substance (such as a thorn or a splinter still lodged in his body), a weak or an old man, an infant, or a man of timid disposition, or a person afflicted with a large number of ulcers, as well as a patient suffering from any of the diseases in which diaphoretic measures are forbidden, should be regarded as a subject unfit for cauterisation. ... Chap. XIV: Cases where blood-letting is prohibited: - A person afflicted with an oedematous swelling extending all over the body should be deemed unfit for bleeding. An intumescence occurring in a weak and enfeebled patient owing to an excessive use of acid food or in a person suffering from jaundice or laid up with haemorrhoids or abdominal dropsy, as well as in an enceinte, or in a person suffering from Pulmonary consumption (Shosha), should not be bled. tr. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna Enumerated contraindication lists on the Sushruta side for three of the modalities that Bhishagratna's own footnote at Vol I page 11 counts as shodhana: alkali and cautery as external purification, bloodletting as internal. Added in response to criticFindings.overclaimed item 2, which said the texts give explicit eligibility and contraindication lists and the record had generalised their absence. They do, and the Chap. XII statement is more pointed still: it names the four variables the summary of this record says the choice turns on, the seat of the disease, the patient's strength, the nature of the malady and the season, and makes them the physician's explicit checklist. Located in the OCR of englishtranslati01susruoft at printed pages 86-87, 91, and 112-113, under the running headers for Chapters XI, XII and XIV of the Sutrasthana. VERSE NUMBER: none asserted, and none is printed. Bhishagratna prints no Sanskrit verse numbers, and in these three chapters he prints no section number either; the only locators are the running chapter and page headers. CAVEAT ON SCOPE, so this citation is not over-read. These are contraindication lists for individual procedures, not a rule for choosing shodhana over shamana, and nothing in them is quantified: 'a weak person', 'an aged person', 'a man of timid disposition' are categorical. Their presence refutes 'no operational definition exists'; it does not supply a measurable one. The ellipses mark omitted material. Quote transcribed from the OCR; line-break hyphens closed and obvious OCR letter-errors corrected. No wording supplied from any other source. Source: https://archive.org/details/englishtranslati01susruoft ## 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. ### Clinical efficacy of Shodhana Karma and Shamana Karma in Mandala Kushtha (Psoriasis). Ayu · 2012 · PMID 23559794 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23559794/) Four-arm comparison in 40 psoriasis patients, ten per arm, randomly allocated, of shodhana alone (vamana plus virechana, Group A), shodhana followed by a shamana preparation (Group B), the shamana preparation alone (Group C), and methotrexate 7.5 mg weekly (Group D). Re-read against the retrieved abstract 2026-10-06: marked improvement 10 percent in Group B only; moderate improvement 20 percent in A, 90 percent in B, 80 percent in D; mild improvement 80 percent in A, 100 percent in C, 20 percent in D. So the combined shodhana-plus-shamana arm reported the highest proportion at moderate or marked, and shamana alone reported no patient above mild. **How much it shows.** Weak. Ten patients per arm, no blinding reported and none described in the abstract, no placebo, outcome reported as categorical 'improvement' grades rather than a validated psoriasis severity index such as PASI, and no follow-up period, so the durability claim at Ch.Su.16.20 is not tested even though it is the claim the design appears aimed at. No statistical test of the between-arm difference is reported in the abstract. 'Published in a low-visibility journal' is the assessment of this record, not a bibliometric finding. PMID, DOI, journal, volume, issue, pages and publication date re-resolved against NCBI esummary 2026-10-06 and all match. ### Efficacy of Virechana and Basti Karma with Shamana therapy in the management of essential hypertension: A comparative study. Ayu · 2013 · PMID 24049408 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24049408/) Randomised open comparison in 33 patients with uncomplicated essential hypertension: Group A, 16 cases, virechana; Group B, 17 cases, Dashamoola kala basti. Both groups were then given the same shamana preparation, Arjunadi ghanavati. Virechana gave 43.75 percent relief against 29.41 percent for basti on systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Re-read against the retrieved abstract 2026-10-06; all figures match. **How much it shows.** Weak. Small, unblinded, no non-shodhana control, both arms received shamana so the shodhana contribution cannot be separated, and percentage relief is reported without effect sizes or confidence intervals. The authors themselves describe the result only as encouraging and as creating scope for further studies. Note also that this is a comparison of two shodhana procedures against each other, not of shodhana against shamana, so it does not test the distinction this record is about. PMID, DOI and bibliographic details re-resolved against NCBI esummary 2026-10-06 and all match. ### Comparative study of Upavasa and Upavasa with Pachana in the management of Agnisada. Ayu · 2010 · PMID 22131738 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22131738/) Comparison of upavasa (fasting, administered as hina matra bhojana, graded reduction of food by padanshika krama) against upavasa plus a digestive, shunthi, in patients aged 20 to 60 with agnisada. Reported 83.77 percent improvement in the fasting-plus-digestive group and 72.97 percent in the fasting-only group, which the authors describe as statistically highly significant at p less than 0.001. Of the studies located in the searches recorded in gatheringNotes, this is the only one that tests a langhana or shamana measure as such rather than a named formulation; the 2026-09-19 version's 'one of the very few studies' was an unbounded claim about the literature and is now bounded to those searches. **How much it shows.** Weak. Small, unblinded, outcome is a composite symptom-score percentage on a scale this record could not find validated, and the comparison is between two active arms with no untreated control. The abstract's wording leaves it ambiguous whether the reported p value is for the between-group difference or for within-group change, and this record does not resolve it; the full text was not retrieved. Illustrates the ceiling of the evidence located for shamana measures. PMID, DOI and bibliographic details re-resolved against NCBI esummary 2026-10-06 and all match. ### Ayurvedic treatments for diabetes mellitus. Cochrane Database Syst Rev · 2011 · PMID 22161426 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22161426/) Cochrane review of Ayurvedic treatments for diabetes mellitus. Re-read against the retrieved abstract 2026-10-06: it found seven randomised trials, six of proprietary herbal mixtures and one of whole-system Ayurvedic treatment, enrolling 354 participants, treatment duration 3 to 6 months, and concluded that although some herbal mixtures produced significant glucose lowering, methodological deficiencies and small sample sizes prevented any definite conclusion about efficacy. **How much it shows.** High-quality systematic review with a declared multi-database search strategy. NARROWED 2026-10-06, self-reported and not from criticFindings. The 2026-09-19 version offered this as a calibration point on the ground that diabetes is 'the best-studied area of Ayurvedic therapeutics' and 'a strictly better-studied area than the shodhana/shamana choice'. Both are unbounded comparative claims about a literature this record has not surveyed, and they are withdrawn. What the review supports here is narrower and is all that is now claimed: when randomised trials of Ayurvedic interventions in one disease area are assessed against standard evidence criteria by independent reviewers, the verdict was that no definite conclusion could be drawn. Six of its seven trials were of proprietary herbal mixtures and none was a trial of shodhana or of shamana as such, so it is evidence about method and not about this distinction. Retained rather than removed, because the review is sound and the right repair was to stop over-reading it. PMID, DOI and bibliographic details re-resolved against NCBI esummary 2026-10-06 and all match. ### Evaluation of Vamana and Virechana as Interventions to Decelerate the Aging Process in Healthy Adult Volunteers: Protocol for an Exploratory Single-Arm Clinical Trial. JMIR Res Protoc · 2026 · PMID 42748372 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42748372/) Registered protocol (CTRI/2024/02/062176) for an exploratory single-arm pre-posttest trial of seasonal purification, vamana in spring and virechana in autumn, in 53 adults aged 35 to 65, with serum malondialdehyde, total superoxide dismutase and telomerase activity as endpoints measured on day 0 and after the samsarjana krama. Recruitment began March 2025; data for 27 participants in vasantha vamana were collected in March and April 2025, analysis pending, completion expected end of December 2026. The protocol states that although studies of the clinical efficacy of vamana and virechana 'are documented in substantial numbers', the efficacy of ritu sodhana 'for health span and decelerating the aging process in healthy individuals remains a gray area'. SECOND THING THIS ESTABLISHES, added 2026-10-06 and bearing on criticFindings.overclaimed item 2: the protocol's own inclusion criteria screen participants for being 'Vamanarha (eligible for therapeutic emesis) and Virechanarha (eligible for therapeutic purgation)' and for madhyama koshtha 'as assessed using a questionnaire', alongside a BMI between 18.5 and 25 and stable weight for three months. So the classical eligibility categories are in operational use as screening criteria in a registered 2026 trial. The questionnaire is not named and no validation of it is cited in the abstract. **How much it shows.** A protocol, not a result. Single-arm, no control group, surrogate biomarker endpoints, and the authors describe the output as hypothesis-generating and as a precursor to adequately powered confirmatory trials. Recorded because it is an accurate and recent statement, from inside the field, that the durability and rejuvenative claims made for shodhana have not been tested, and because it documents the eligibility categories in current use. The quoted phrase was re-read in the retrieved abstract 2026-10-06 and appears there verbatim. PMID, DOI and bibliographic details re-resolved against NCBI esummary 2026-10-06 and all match; PMCID PMC13581141. ## Open questions on this record Recorded rather than resolved. - TRAP FOR THE NEXT AUDITOR, numbering. Do not compare this record's Charaka addresses against another record's without checking which numbering each is using. Kaviratna's printed numbers and the standard Trikamji numbers diverge here by three in Sutrasthana 16, by one then two in Sutrasthana 22, and by zero in Sutrasthana 23 per the chikitsa-sutra record. Two records citing the same aphorism in different systems look like a discrepancy and are not; two citing different aphorisms in the same system can look identical. An earlier auditor flag in this project failed for exactly this reason. - TRAP FOR THE NEXT AUDITOR, string matching in Kaviratna. The langhana definition quoted at Ca.Su.22.9 exists twice in the Kaviratna volume, once in the main text of Lesson XXII and once, shortened, inside a translator's footnote in a later lesson that ends '- T.'. The ten-langhana sentence likewise matches twice. A matcher that normalises punctuation will treat the footnote as a hit. This is the same shape as the press-notice failure that broke the chikitsa-sutra record. Identify the main text by Kaviratna's printed aphorism number and by the surrounding dialogue with Agnivesha, not by the string. - TRAP FOR THE NEXT AUDITOR, Bhishagratna footnotes. Three doctrines in this subject area sit in Bhishagratna's footnotes and not in Sushruta's text: the external/internal division of shodhana at Vol I page 11, and the pala and tola equivalence of the prasrita at Vol II page 591. This record carried the first into its components list as 'Sushruta's division' for two weeks. Every Bhishagratna citation here states on its face whether the material is text or note. - Whether the three criteria at Ca.Si.1.13-15 can disagree in a single patient, that is whether a patient can reach eight bouts without reaching two prasthas or without reaching pittanta, and which criterion the text intends to govern if they conflict. Nothing retrieved says. - Whether this record should carry Charaka Siddhi Sthana at all given that its English is in copyright and only its Sanskrit is quotable. The decision taken here was yes, because a Sanskrit quote with a verse number satisfies this project's addressing rule and the alternative was to leave a false claim standing; but the record now contains Sanskrit-only citations for the first time and a drafting-phase decision about how those are presented to a reader is still owed. ## Citation Age Ayurveda Nighantu, "Shodhana and Shamana (purification versus pacification)", https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/concept/shodhana-shamana/, CC BY 4.0. Whole concept set: https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/concepts.json and https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/concepts.csv. 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.