agnimāndya: what the term means and how it is translated
agnimāndya अग्निमान्द्य is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 5 different ways, 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 | agnimāndya |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | अग्निमान्द्य |
| Also written | agnimāndyam, agnisāda, śītāgnitā, mandāgnitā |
| Category, as gathered | pathology / clinical condition |
| Grouped here under | Causation and the course of disease |
| Classical citations | 4 |
| 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.
Impaired digestion disorder (TM2)
ICD-11 MMS v2026-01, Traditional Medicine Module 2 · code SM3B, Indigestion disorder (TM2) — index term (a) agnimāndyam · classification
Retrieved verbatim. The SM3B entry's index terms read: 'Indigestion disorder (TM2) — (a) ajīrṇam (b) Ceriyāmai (c) Ḍuʻf al-Haḍm; Impaired digestion disorder (TM2) — (a) agnimāndyam; Indigestion disorder due to Aẕal (TM2) — (b) Acīraṇa pittam; Indigestion disorder due to kapha (TM2) — (a) apaktiḥ'. So ICD-11 subsumes agnimāndya under Indigestion and gives it no code of its own. The (a)/(b)/(c) markers denote Ayurveda/Siddha/Unani.
Reproduced unaltered and attributed from WHO ICD-11, 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.
NO ENTRY
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · searched the full extracted text of the live IRIS PDF for 'agnimāndya' and 'agnimandya': zero hits · terminology-standard · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
A substantive negative finding. The WHO Ayurveda terminology standard does not contain agnimāndya at all; it covers the same ground with mandāgni (ITA-2.6.11 and ITA-5.11.1). Anyone mapping Ayurvedic clinical vocabulary to WHO ISTA will find agnimāndya unmappable.
impaired digestion
NAMASTE / National AYUSH Morbidity Codes (NAMC), Ministry of Ayush · NAMC code ACB-23 — SItAgnitA (agnimAndyam) (kEvala-kapha) / शीताग्निता (अग्निमान्द्यम्) (केवल-कफ); NAMC cites Ca.Su.20/17 and Bp.Ma.28/3 · terminology-standard
agnimāndya appears in NAMC only as a parenthetical gloss on śītāgnitā, with the qualifier 'due only to कफदोष'. It has no code in its own right; the codeable conditions are mandāgni (DB-1), viṣamāgni (DB-2), tīkṣṇāgni (DB-3).
Reproduced unaltered and attributed from the Government of India NAMASTE terminology, 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.
AGNIMANDYA (Dyspepsia)
National Health Portal of India · nhp.gov.in page title '-agnimandya-dyspepsia_mtl' · government-health-portal
An Indian government health portal equates agnimāndya with dyspepsia in its page title. Recorded as a documented institutional rendering, and as the source of a very common equation; see mistranslations for why it is problematic. I saw this only as a search-result title and did not retrieve the page body.
no dedicated rendering by either public-domain translator
Kaviratna (Charaka) and Bhishagratna (Sushruta) · public-domain-translation · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
Neither translator uses the word. Kaviratna translates apakti at Ca.Sū.20 as 'inability to digest the food taken' and leaves śītāgnitā untranslated in his enumeration.
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.
Charaka Saṃhitā with Cakrapāṇi's Āyurvedadīpikā (Sanskrit)Sūtrasthāna 12:commentary on verse 11 · checked against the source
pittāntargata iti vacanena śarīre jvālādiyuktavahniniṣedhena pittoṣmarūpasya vahneḥ sadbhāvaṃ darśayati; na tu pittādabhedaṃ, pittenāgnimāndyasya grahaṇyadhyāye vakṣyamāṇatvāt, tathā pittaharasya sarpiṣo'gnivardhanatvenoktatvāt |
The word agnimāndya in a retrievable pre-modern source. Glossing Charaka's pittāntargataḥ, Cakrapāṇi argues that the body's fire exists in the form of pitta's heat, a fire without flames, but is not identical with pitta, for two reasons: agnimāndya is to be discussed in the Grahaṇī chapter, and pitta-reducing ghee is described as agni-increasing. Both turn on agni and pitta moving in opposite directions. This is commentarial usage of roughly the 11th century and is what Cakrapāṇi says, not what Charaka says; the mūla of 12.11 does not contain the word.
Charaka SaṃhitāSūtrasthāna XX (Mahāroga Adhyāya):list of twenty kaphaja disorders (NAMASTE cites this as Ca.Su.20/17 for śītāgnitā) · checked against the source
We shall next expound the twenty varieties of diseases caused by excitement of the Phlegm. These are as follows :— i.Tripti, 2. Tandra, 3. Nidradhikya, 4. Staimitya, 5. Gurugatrata, 6. Alasya, 7. Mukhamadhuryya, 8. Mukhaçrava, 9. Çleshmodgirana, 10. Valanaça, n. Apakti, 12. Hridayoplepa, 13. Kanthopalepa, 14. Dhamanipratichaya, 15. Galaganda, ... 16. Atisthaulyam, 17. Çitagnita, 18. Udardda, 19. Çwetavabhasata, and 20. Çweta-mutra-netra-varchchastwam.
Sitagnita stands in Charaka's list of twenty kaphaja disorders at Ca.Su.20, and Kaviratna DOES render it: his footnote on p. 230 reads "17. Citagnita is loss of appetite and inability to take any food", so a public-domain English rendering exists. Note on the locator: NAMASTE cites Ca.Su.20/17, where 17 is the VERSE number and not a position in the list. Kaviratna's list omits malasyadhikya and so runs one shorter than the standard text, which makes any apparent agreement between his list position and the verse number a coincidence rather than a confirmation.
Charaka SaṃhitāCikitsāsthāna 15:42-44 (Kaviratna prints 41-43) · checked against the source
From abstention from all food, from eating food that is indigestible, from eating to excess, from eating food consisting of inharmonious ingredients, from eating food that is not assimilable, or is heavy, or cold, or excessively dry (unoily), or vitiated, from errors in the administration of purgatives, emetics, and oils, from affliction (i. e., weakness, emaciation, &c.,) by diseases, from absence of harmony in respect of place (habitat), time (age), and season, from suppression of the urgings (of nature), the (digestive) fire is vitiated. The vitiated fire cannot digest food that is even light.
The classical aetiology of impaired agni, in public-domain English: dietary, iatrogenic, disease-related, environmental and urge-suppression causes. Verse numbers confirmed against the Sanskrit (Ca.Ci.15.42 'अभोजनादजीर्णातिभोजनाद्विषमाशनात्', Ca.Ci.15.44 'दुष्यत्यग्निः, स दुष्टोऽन्नं न तत् पचति लघ्वपि').
Charaka Saṃhitā (Sanskrit)Cikitsāsthāna 15:44 · checked against the source
दुष्यत्यग्निः, स दुष्टोऽन्नं न तत् पचति लघ्वपि। अपच्यमानं शुक्तत्वं यात्यन्नं विषरूपताम् ॥४४॥
The mechanism linking impaired agni to āma: the vitiated fire cannot digest even light food, and undigested food becomes sour (śukta) and acquires the nature of poison (viṣarūpatā).
Where this term does work in the theory
One concept record names this term as one of its components, and glosses it there as follows.
- Ama and its formation as Agnimandya
- Weakening of the digestive fire, the stated precondition. Charaka lists the causes: fasting, indigestible food, overeating, incompatible combinations, unassimilable, heavy, cold, excessively dry or spoiled food, errors in purgation, emesis and oleation, debility from disease, mismatch of place, time and season, and suppression of natural urges.
Not to be confused with
- mandāgni
- The central distinction. mandāgni names a state or type of agni; agnimāndya names the condition of agni being dulled. The standards split on which they carry: WHO has only mandāgni, ICD-11 TM2 has only agnimāndya, NAMASTE has mandāgni as a code and agnimāndya only as a gloss. Treating them as one word will break any cross-standard mapping.
- ajīrṇa
- ICD-11 SM3B puts them under one code, but ajīrṇa is the failure to digest a particular meal (with its own vātaja/pittaja/kaphaja/āmaja subtypes in NAMASTE, e.g. EB-3.3 Amaja-ajīrṇam) whereas agnimāndya is the standing impairment of capacity.
- śītāgnitā
- NAMASTE glosses śītāgnitā as agnimāndya and restricts it to kapha alone (kEvala-kapha). If that restriction is real, agnimāndya is the broader term and the gloss is loose.
- dyspepsia
- Dyspepsia is a symptom complex defined by epigastric pain, fullness and early satiety with duration criteria; agnimāndya is a functional-capacity diagnosis that can exist without any of those symptoms. The National Health Portal's equation is administratively convenient and clinically lossy.
- grahaṇī-roga
- Ca.Ci.15.56 makes weak agni causally prior to grahaṇī vitiation. The disease and the impairment are at different levels.
- anorexia / aruci
- ICD-11 TM2 has a separate Anorexia disorder (TM2). Loss of desire for food is not the same as loss of digestive capacity.
Renderings that do not hold
- dyspepsia. Used by the National Health Portal of India and widespread in clinical writing. It maps a capacity concept onto a symptom cluster, and it makes the condition undiagnosable in an asymptomatic patient with poor digestion, which is precisely the case classical practice cares about.
- indigestion. Same problem as ICD-11's SM3B grouping: it collapses agnimāndya into ajīrṇa, losing the standing-versus-episodic distinction.
- low metabolism / hypometabolism. Systemic framing for a term whose classical aetiology (Ca.Ci.15.42-44) is almost entirely dietary and behavioural.
- gastritis. No source I retrieved supports this; ICD-11 TM2 keeps Hyperacidity disorder (SM3A) separate.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Where does agnimāndya first appear as a fixed compound, Mādhava Nidāna, Cakrapāṇi, or earlier?
- Why does WHO ISTA omit a term that ICD-11 TM2 indexes?
- Is NAMASTE right that śītāgnitā is agnimāndya restricted to kapha?
- Does Bhāvaprakāśa Ma.28/3 define it?
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, agnimāndya
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/agnimandya/, 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.