ahitāyu / ahitāyuḥ: what the term means and how it is translated
ahitāyu / ahitāyuḥ अहितायुः is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 4 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 | ahitāyu / ahitāyuḥ |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | अहितायुः |
| Also written | ahitayu, ahita ayu |
| Category, as gathered | foundational |
| Grouped here under | Foundations and categories |
| 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.
Unsalutary life
WHO international standard terminologies on Ayurveda (WHO, 2022) · Term ID ITA-1.2.3, printed p. 2 · standard
WHO's description: 'A mode of life that is disadvantageous for oneself and generally detrimental.' Recorded as a fact about WHO. 'Unsalutary' is rare in general English and appears to have been coined to pair with ITA-1.2.2.
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.
Life of an opposite character
Charaka Samhita, tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna (1896-1913) · Sutrasthana Lesson XXX, aphorism 20 · translation
Public domain. Kaviratna gives no positive English term at all, because Charaka gives no positive Sanskrit definition - the text defines ahitāyu purely as the reverse of hitāyu. Any single-word English rendering therefore adds content the source does not have.
evil
Charaka Samhita, tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna (1896-1913) · Sutrasthana Lesson I, aphorism 40 (= Su 1.41 modern): 'Good, evil, happy and unhappy is Life.' · translation
Kaviratna's rendering of ahita in the Su 1.41 dvandva. Strongly moralising, and inconsistent with his own 'opposite character' at Su 30.24.
unwholesome life / non-beneficial life
common Indian journal and textbook usage · textbook · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
Both circulate. Neither is anchored in a distinct Sanskrit expression; the text supplies only viparyayeṇa ('by the reverse').
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 SamhitaSutrasthana 30 (Arthedaśamahāmūlīya Adhyāya):24 · checked against the source
हितमायुरुच्यते; अहितमतो विपर्ययेण ॥२४॥
The entire positive content of ahitāyu in the classical text: it is defined only as viparyaya, the reverse of hitāyu, in three words at the end of the verse. This is the single most important fact about the term and it is routinely obscured by entries that give it a full description.
Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana Lesson XXX (Arthedaśamahāmūlīya):20 in Kaviratna's numbering · checked against the source
the Life is said to be beneficial. The reverse of this would be called Life of an opposite character.-!"20
The quotable English confirming that ahitāyu is given no independent description. The '-!"' before the aphorism number is an OCR rendering of a footnote dagger; reproduced exactly as retrieved.
Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana 1 (Dīrghañjīvitīya Adhyāya):41 · checked against the source
हिताहितं सुखं दुःखमायुस्तस्य हिताहितम्| मानं च तच्च यत्रोक्तमायुर्वेदः स उच्यते||४१||
The first occurrence: ahita appears only inside the compound hitāhitaṃ, i.e. the term ahitāyu as a standalone word does not occur here at all. It is an extracted form.
Not to be confused with
- duḥkhāyu
- The two negative limbs are not the same. Duḥkhāyu (Su 30.24: asukham) is the reverse of the health-and-circumstances description; ahitāyu is the reverse of the ethical-conduct description. A rich, healthy, happy person living badly is ahitāyu and sukhāyu at once.
- ahita (as a dietetic category)
- Ahita-āhāra, unsuitable food, is a different and much commoner use of the word ahita. Ahitāyu is about the conduct of a life, not about a substance.
- apathya
- Apathya is the contra-indicated regimen for a condition. Ahitāyu is a description of a whole life, and is not prescriptive.
Renderings that do not hold
- unhealthy life. Health does not appear in the ahitāyu definition; that content belongs to the duḥkhāyu side of the verse.
- sinful life. Over-translates. The Sanskrit says only viparyayeṇa, by the reverse; the moral colouring comes from the list of virtues in the hitāyu half, not from a separate term.
- harmful life. Ambiguous between harmful to oneself and harmful to others. The Sanskrit derives it by negation and does not specify which, and WHO's description covers both ('disadvantageous for oneself and generally detrimental') without resolving it either.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Whether any classical commentator supplies positive content for ahitāyu rather than leaving it as viparyaya. Chakrapani on Su 30.24 was not retrieved.
- Whether the standalone word ahitāyuḥ occurs anywhere in the Brhattrayi as a single word, or whether, as the two verses I retrieved suggest, it is always hitāhita as a compound or ahitam as a predicate. This is checkable against a full Sanskrit corpus and I could not check it: GRETIL's Charaka file covers only Su 1.1-1.43 and a few other blocks, not Su 30.
- Whether NAMASTE codes it.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, ahitāyu / ahitāyuḥ
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/ahitayu/, 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.