āhāraśakti: what the term means and how it is translated
āhāraśakti आहारशक्ति 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 | āhāraśakti |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | आहारशक्ति |
| Also written | abhyavaharaṇaśakti, jaraṇaśakti |
| Category, as gathered | prakriti |
| Grouped here under | Regimen and constitution |
| Classical citations | 3 |
| 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.
power of food intake and digestion
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.7.5 item 8 · standard
The only occurrence of the compound in the WHO standard; like saṃhanana it has no headword of its own.
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.
Digestive power
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-2.6.27 (jaraṇaśaktiḥ) · standard
'The capacity to digest consumed food.' One of the two limbs, given its own headword.
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.
Ingestive power, food intake capacity
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-2.6.28 (abhyavaharaṇa-śaktiḥ) · standard
'The capacity to ingest food, the amount of food which does not disturb an individual's physiological functions.' WHO decomposes āhāraśakti into exactly the two capacities Vi 8/120 names, without ever naming the compound outside the list.
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.
capacity for food
Charaka Samhita, tr. Kaviratna (1896-1913) · Vimanasthana 8 · translation
With a footnote spelling out that it 'includes not simply capacity for eating, but also capacity for digesting'.
appetite and digestive capacity
Indian Ayurvedic college usage · textbook · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
'Appetite' is weaker than abhyavaharaṇa-śakti, which is about quantity tolerated rather than desire.
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 SamhitaVimanasthana 8:120 · checked against the source
āhāraśaktitaścēti āhāraśaktirabhyavaharaṇaśaktyā jaraṇaśaktayā ca parīkṣyā; balāyuṣī hyāhārāyattē||120||
The entire term in one line: āhāraśakti is examined BY two things, abhyavaharaṇa-śakti and jaraṇa-śakti, because strength and lifespan depend on food. A composite indicator, not a single quantity.
Charaka SamhitaVimanasthana 8:120 · checked against the source
Next, as to examination (of the patient) in respect of capacity for food. One's capacity for food is to be ascertained from one's capacity for eating as also capacity for digesting; since strength and period of life are both dependent upon food.
Public-domain English for Vi 8/120.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 35 · checked against the source
The digestive heat, which fully digests the ingested food at the proper time without the least irregularity, thus reflecting the continuance of the bodily humours in their normal state, is called Samagni .
In the same chapter where Sushruta examines the patient, digestive capacity is handled as the four states of agni (sama, viṣama, tīkṣṇa, manda) rather than as a śakti. Sushruta's framework for this domain is agni, not āhāraśakti, a structural difference between the two samhitas. No verse numbers on the retrieved page.
Not to be confused with
- agni / jāṭharāgni
- The commonest conflation. Agni is the digestive fire with four states; jaraṇa-śakti is the capacity it confers, and āhāraśakti the composite with intake. Sushruta Sutrasthana 35 handles the domain entirely through agni and never uses āhāraśakti.
- abhyavaharaṇa-śakti
- One limb, not the whole. WHO defines it as the amount of food that does not disturb physiological function, a quantity, not a desire.
- jaraṇa-śakti
- The other limb. A patient can have good jaraṇa-śakti and poor abhyavaharaṇa-śakti, which is why Vi 8/120 requires both.
- kṣudhā (appetite)
- Desire to eat. Neither limb of āhāraśakti is desire; both are capacities.
- koṣṭha
- Bowel type, a different axis of digestive assessment.
- agnibala
- Used in later writing for much the same idea, but it folds āhāraśakti back into the agni framework and loses the intake limb.
Renderings that do not hold
- appetite. Reduces two capacities to one desire, and the wrong one. The Sanskrit asks how much a person can take in and digest, not how much he wants.
- digestive fire. That is agni. Vi 8/120 examines demonstrated capacity, which is evidence about agni, not agni itself.
- metabolism. A modern systemic concept covering far more, and implying measurement methods the term does not have.
- digestive strength. Drops the intake limb, which is half the definition.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Is there any validated instrument for assessing āhāraśakti, or does assessment rest entirely on clinical interview? None found.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, āhāraśakti
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/ahara-shakti/, 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.