āgantu-roga: what the term means and how it is translated
āgantu-roga आगन्तुरोगः is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 7 different ways across 8 sources, which is the reason this page exists: the renderings do not agree, and the difference between them changes what the term is taken to mean.
| Transliteration | āgantu-roga |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | आगन्तुरोगः |
| Also written | agantuja roga, agantuka roga, āgantuja-vyādhi, āgantuka, agantu vyadhi |
| Category, as gathered | disease-kinds |
| Grouped here under | Causation and the course of disease |
| Classical citations | 5 |
| Citations checked | 2026-10-08 |
How it is translated, and whether the translation holds
Each rendering is given with the source that uses it. The assessment is ours.
Accidental
Charaka Samhita, trans. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna · Sutrasthana ch. 11 (Tistraishaniya); full sentence: 'Accidental are those that arise from the action of spirits, of poison, of wind, of fire, of acts of violence done to the body, such as beating, &c.' · translation (public domain)
Kaviratna renders agantu as 'Accidental' in both Sutrasthana 11 and Nidana 1, so unlike his nija he is consistent here.
accidental
Charaka Samhita, trans. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna · Nidana Sthana ch. 1, his aphorism 9 (= Ni.1/12 modern): 'Diseases are of two kinds, as natural and accidental.' · translation (public domain)
Traumatic or of extraneous origin (agantuka)
Sushruta Samhita, trans. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna · Sutrasthana ch. I (Vedotpatti), 'Disease:—its Definition' · translation (public domain)
Bhishagratna gives a doubled rendering, 'Traumatic' plus 'of extraneous origin', which is more faithful than either alone: the class covers trauma AND poisons, spirits and external agents.
A disease due to an extraneous blow or hurt is called agantuka.
Sushruta Samhita, trans. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna · Sutrasthana ch. I, explanation of the four types · translation (public domain)
Note that Bhishagratna's gloss here narrows to blow/hurt, while the Sanskrit of Su.Su.1/25 (आगन्तवोऽभिघातनिमित्ताः) is also narrow (abhighata = assault/injury). Sushruta's agantu is narrower than Charaka's, which includes bhuta, visha, vayu and agni.
Traumatic wound
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-5.54.11, Sanskrit headword āgantujavraṇaḥ (आगनतुजव्रणः), description: 'Various types of ulcers caused by external injury or trauma.' · standard
Again a compound, not a disease-class headword. WHO ISTA has no āgantu-roga entry.
Reproduced unaltered and attributed from the WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda, which is what that licence permits. It is deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is offered under CC BY 4.0 and invites the modification a NoDerivs licence forbids.
Extrinsic, exogenous diseases
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.2.21, Sanskrit headword ādhibhautikarogaḥ (आधिभौतिकरोगः), description: 'Diseases caused in the body due to exogenous or traumatic causes such as accidental injuries and falls or resulting from animal bites or poisons.' · standard
This is the entry WHO actually offers where a reader would look for agantu. It is adhibhautika, a different Sanskrit term from a different classification, and its description is very close to Charaka's agantu. Recording the substitution is the point.
Reproduced unaltered and attributed from the WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda, which is what that licence permits. It is deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is offered under CC BY 4.0 and invites the modification a NoDerivs licence forbids.
Traumatic physical injury
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.2.22, Sanskrit headword samghātabalapravṛttarogaḥ (संघातबलप्रवृत्तरोगः) · standard
WHO's coverage of traumatic disease follows Sushruta's seven-fold bala-pravritta scheme rather than Charaka's agantu.
Reproduced unaltered and attributed from the WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda, which is what that licence permits. It is deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is offered under CC BY 4.0 and invites the modification a NoDerivs licence forbids.
exogenous disease
common BAMS/textbook rendering · textbook usage · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
Standard modern classroom pairing with nija = endogenous.
The classical passages
Each citation gives its address so a reader can check it in a printed edition, our account of what the passage establishes, and the result of reading it against its source.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 1:24 · checked against the source
ते चतुर्विधाः- आगन्तवः, शारीराः, मानसाः, स्वाभाविकाश्चेति ||२४||
Sushruta's fourfold classification of vyadhi: agantu, sharira, manasa, svabhavika, with the verse number as printed. Agantu is listed first. SOURCE CAVEAT: the verse number is verified only against this site's presentation of the mula text, not against a critical edition.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 1:25 · checked against the source
तेषामागन्तवोऽभिघातनिमित्ताः शारीरास्त्वन्नपानमूला वातापित्तकफशोणितसन्निपातवैषम्यनिमित्ताः मानसास्तु क्रोधशोकभयहर्षविषादेर्ष्याभ्यसूयादैन्यमात्सर्यकामलोभप्रभृतयः इच्छा द्वेषभेदैर्भवन्ति; स्वाभाविकास्तु क्षुत्पिपासाजरामृत्युनिद्राप्रकृ(भृ)तयः ॥२५॥
Definitions of all four classes. Agantu = abhighata-nimitta, caused by assault/injury. Narrower than Charaka's agantu.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 1 · checked against the source
There are four different types of disease such as, Traumatic or of extraneous origin (agantuka), Bodily (Sharira), Mental (Manasa) and Natural (Svabhavika). A disease due to an extraneous blow or hurt is called agantuka.
The lawfully quotable English of Su.Su.1/24-25. Verse numbers are not printed on this page (the bracketed [9] and [10] are Bhishagratna's footnote markers, NOT verse numbers), so the verse field is left empty here and the numbers are carried separately from the Sanskrit.
Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana 11:45 · checked against the source
त्रयो रोगा इति- निजागन्तुमानसाः| तत्र निजः शारीरदोषसमुत्थः, आगन्तुर्भूतविषवाय्वग्निसम्प्रहारादिसमुत्थः, मानसः पुनरिष्टस्यलाभाल्लाभाच्चानिष्टस्योपजायते||४५||
Charaka's agantu: bhūta-viṣa-vāyu-agni-samprahāra-ādi-samuttha, arising from spirits, poison, wind, fire, assault and the like. Notably broader than Sushruta's abhighata-only agantu.
Charaka SamhitaNidana Sthana 1:12 · checked against the source
विधिर्नाम- द्विविधा व्याधयो निजागन्तुभेदेन,त्रिविधास्त्रिदोषभेदेन, चतुर्विधाः साध्यासाध्यमृदुदारुणभेदेन|१२|
The twofold nija/agantu division under vidhi-samprapti.
Not to be confused with
- nija-roga
- The complementary class. Nija arises from one's own doshas, agantu from an external agent. The complementarity is real but the boundary is not: Charaka's agantu includes bhuta (possessing entities) and Sushruta's does not.
- adhibhautika-roga
- WHO ISTA glosses adhibhautika as 'Extrinsic, exogenous diseases' with a description nearly identical to Charaka's agantu. They belong to different classifications (tapa-traya vs nija/agantu) and must not be merged just because their English descriptions converge.
- samghata-bala-pravritta roga
- Sushruta's traumatic class in the seven-fold bala-pravritta scheme of Su.Su.24. Overlaps agantu in extension but sits in a different taxonomy within the same text, so Sushruta classifies trauma twice, in two schemes.
- svabhavika-roga
- Sushruta's fourth class. 'Natural' processes are not caused by an external agent and are not agantu, though both are sometimes lumped as 'not caused by dosha'.
- agantuja-jvara / agantuja-vrana
- Specific disease entities (fever of external origin, traumatic ulcer) that carry the agantu qualifier. WHO ISTA codes these individual compounds and not the class term, so retrieving them and treating them as the class definition is an error.
Renderings that do not hold
- accidental disease. Kaviratna's own choice, and misleading in modern English because 'accidental' implies chance. Agantu means 'arriving, coming from outside'; a deliberate assault and a snakebite are agantu and neither is accidental.
- infectious disease. A very common modern over-reading, encouraged by the gloss of bhuta as 'invisible organisms'. Agantu is defined by externality of the agent, not transmissibility. WHO ISTA codes contagious disease separately (ITA-4.2.32, samsargajarogaḥ).
- traumatic disease. Correct for Sushruta (abhighata-nimitta) and too narrow for Charaka, whose agantu includes poison, fire, wind and bhuta. A single English word cannot serve both texts and the lexicon should say so rather than pick one.
- idiopathic. Occasionally seen by confusion with 'of unknown cause'. Agantu is the class with the most conspicuous cause of all.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Do the commentators note the discrepancy between Charaka's broad agantu (bhuta, visha, vayu, agni, samprahara) and Sushruta's narrow abhighata-only agantu, or is it simply left standing?
- Where does Sushruta's own agantu class sit relative to his samghata-bala-pravritta class in Su.Su.24? The two taxonomies coexist in one sthana and I did not find a passage reconciling them.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, āgantu-roga
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/agantu-roga/, CC BY 4.0.
The whole lexicon is downloadable from the index.
Machine-readable source: Markdown.
Data exported 2026-10-08.
Educational reference only. A term entry explains what a word means and how it has been translated. Nothing here is advice, and nothing here describes how any condition should be treated.