Ayurvedic technical terms are rendered into English inconsistently, and the inconsistency changes the meaning. This lexicon holds 277 terms with 1,631 renderings between them: for each term, every English equivalent found in the WHO standard terminologies, the published Samhita translations and the secondary literature, each with the source that uses it and an assessment of whether it survives the classical passage it claims to render.

The point is not to pick a winner. It is that a reader meeting "humour" for doṣa or "pacifying" for praśamana should be able to see what the word carries that the English does not.

What is here
Terms	277
English renderings recorded	1,631
Classical citations	1,233
Quotations published	1,135
Quotations withheld	38, each saying why on the citation
Citations that are an address only	60
Terms with a recorded mistranslation	277

Which quotations are published, and which are not

A classical quotation appears here only if it is Sanskrit mūla, which is ancient and carries no licence question, or an English translation this project has cleared: Kaviratna's Charaka of 1896 to 1913, or Bhishagratna's Sushruta of 1907 to 1916. Anything else is published as an address and our own account of what the passage establishes, with the quoted words withheld and the reason stated on the citation itself. 38 of 1,233 citations are in that position.

A quotation is also withheld if nobody has read it against its source, whatever its licence says. That accounts for most of the withheld ones: the verification pass keyed on a field that these citations do not carry, so they escaped it, and an unchecked quotation is not something this site will stand behind. The address and the characterisation still publish, because a reader can follow an address to a library.

The companion set: where the theory disagrees with itself

A term entry answers what a word means. It does not answer whether the thing the word names is settled, and often it is not. The concept records hold 147 questions on which the classical sources genuinely disagree, with 461 competing positions attributed to the sources that hold them, plus 384 explicit statements of what is not established. 67 of the terms here are named as components of one of those concepts and link both ways.

Terms whose renderings disagree most

Four or more distinct English equivalents in use for one term. These are where the translation question has teeth.

laṅghana-pācana लङ्घनपाचन
11 distinct renderings. Including "Langhana-Pāchana (left untranslated as a proper term); in the explanatory aphorism: "both Langhana and Pāchana"".
buddhi बुद्धिः
10 distinct renderings. Including "Intelligence, intellect".
pācana पाचन
10 distinct renderings. Including "Digestion".
pariṇāma परिणाम
10 distinct renderings. Including "Course of development, transformation".
prajñāparādha प्रज्ञापराध
10 distinct renderings. Including "Behaviour based on erroneous judgement".
agni अग्नि
9 distinct renderings. Including "Digestive, metabolic factors".
dhātu धातु
9 distinct renderings. Including "Fundamental structural component".
malakṣaya मलक्षय
9 distinct renderings. Including "Diminution of faeces".
malavṛddhi मलवृद्धि
9 distinct renderings. Including "Morbid increase of faeces".
mānasika-roga मानसरोगः
9 distinct renderings. Including "Two types of psychological disease".
ojas ओजस्
9 distinct renderings. Including "Ojas".
pūrvarūpa पूर्वरूप
9 distinct renderings. Including "Prodrome, premonitory symptoms".
samprāpti सम्प्राप्ति
9 distinct renderings. Including "Evolution or natural course of disease".
asādhya असाध्य
8 distinct renderings. Including "Diseases that are incurable (asādhyarogaḥ, ITA-4.2.41): 'Diseases which are incurable owing to the implication of all dosha, multiple structural components and channels.'".
dhātu-sāra धातुसार
8 distinct renderings. Including "Predominance of a particular fundamental structural component in a person".
hetu हेतु
8 distinct renderings. Including "Etiology".
kapha कफ
8 distinct renderings. Including "Kapha, doṣha responsible for cohesiveness".
mandāgni मन्दाग्नि
8 distinct renderings. Including "Depressed or weak state of digestive, metabolic factors".
nidāna निदान
8 distinct renderings. Including "Etiology".
pañcamahābhūta पञ्चमहाभूत
8 distinct renderings. Including "Five elements".
pañcendriya पञ्चेन्द्रिय
8 distinct renderings. Including "Sensory faculty (jñānendriyam)".
prakṛti प्रकृति
8 distinct renderings. Including "An individual's inherent nature".
puruṣa पुरुषः
8 distinct renderings. Including "Person, living being".
rūpa रूप
8 distinct renderings. Including "Signs and symptoms".

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These groupings are editorial, not classical. The formulary and the Samhitas do not sort their vocabulary this way; each term's own category, as recorded during gathering, is printed on its page.

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lexicon.json and lexicon.csv, CC BY 4.0. The CSV is one row per rendering, which is the shape anyone comparing translations wants. Our assessments are ours and are included; withheld quotations are absent from both and the reason travels with the row.

Exported 2026-10-08 from the term corpus, so this cannot drift from it. Machine-readable twin of every term page: append .md to its URL.

Ayurvedic terminology: how each term is rendered into English

Which quotations are published, and which are not

The companion set: where the theory disagrees with itself

Terms whose renderings disagree most

Browse by subject

Foundations and categories 29

Dosha and its subtypes 27

Body: tissues, wastes and channels 67

Mind 5

Pharmacology and the action of substances 37

Causation and the course of disease 33

Examination and treatment 41

Regimen and constitution 38

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