āyus / āyu: what the term means and how it is translated
āyus / āyu आयुः 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 | āyus / āyu |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | आयुः |
| Also written | ayus, ayuh, āyuḥ, ayu |
| Category, as gathered | foundational |
| Grouped here under | Foundations and categories |
| 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.
Life process, cycle or span
WHO international standard terminologies on Ayurveda (WHO, 2022) · Term ID ITA-1.2.1, section 1.2 'Terms related to life', printed p. 1 · standard
WHO declines to render āyu with a single English word and instead gives a three-part English term. Its description ('The coalescence of body, sense organs, mind and self that dynamically supports, nourishes and propagates itself...') is a close paraphrase of Charaka Sutrasthana 1.42 and its five listed synonyms (āyuḥ, dhāri, jīvitam, nityaga, anubandhaḥ) are that verse's paryāya list. Verified in a freshly downloaded copy of the PDF, p. 19 of the PDF file.
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
Charaka Samhita, tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna (1896-1913) · Sutrasthana, Lesson I, aphorism 41 in Kaviratna's numbering (= Su 1.42 in modern numbering) · translation
Public domain. Kaviratna capitalises 'Life' as a technical term and leaves the four synonyms untranslated in the verse (Dhari, Jivita, Nityaga, Anubandha), glossing them only in a footnote. He does not use 'lifespan'.
the period of Life
Charaka Samhita, tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna (1896-1913), translator's footnote · footnote to Sutrasthana Lesson XXX: "JAyush' is the period of Life. Generally, however, it stands for Life. — T." (OCR renders 'Ayush' as 'JAyush') · translation
Kaviratna himself flags the ambiguity that the lexicon exists to record: āyus can mean duration, but in the Samhita it usually means life itself.
life span / longevity
common BAMS textbook and journal usage · textbook · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
Very widely used in Indian Ayurvedic teaching literature and in the titles of modern papers (e.g. 'Ayu Pareeksha' = examination of the life/lifespan). It narrows āyu to duration, which Charaka Su 1.42 explicitly does not do. Recorded as a widespread rendering, not endorsed.
not covered
ICD-11 Traditional Medicine Module 2 (Chapter 26, Module II, SK00-ST2Z) · classification · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
No entity for āyu was found. TM2 is a classification of traditional-medicine disorders and patterns, not a terminology of foundational concepts, so absence here is expected rather than an oversight. I could not enumerate TM2 contents directly; the ICD-11 browser page returned only navigation chrome to my fetch.
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 1 (Dīrghañjīvitīya Adhyāya):42 · checked against the source
शरीरेन्द्रियसत्त्वात्मसंयोगो धारि जीवितम्| नित्यगश्चानुबन्धश्च पर्यायैरायुरुच्यते||४२||
Defines āyu as the conjunction (saṃyoga) of body, sense organs, mind (sattva) and self (ātman), and gives dhāri, jīvita, nityaga and anubandha as its synonyms. This is the locus classicus for the term.
Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana Lesson I (= chapter 1):41 in Kaviratna's numbering (= 1.42 modern) · checked against the source
The union of body, senses, mind, and soul is called Life. The latter is known again by the names of Dhari, Jivita, Nityaga, and Anubandha *41
The only lawfully quotable English rendering of the āyu definition: Kaviratna gives 'Life' for āyu and leaves the four synonyms untransliterated. Double spacing in the quote is the archive.org OCR, reproduced as retrieved.
Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana 1 (Dīrghañjīvitīya Adhyāya):41 · checked against the source
हिताहितं सुखं दुःखमायुस्तस्य हिताहितम्| मानं च तच्च यत्रोक्तमायुर्वेदः स उच्यते||४१||
States that āyu is fourfold - hita, ahita, sukha, duḥkha - and that the science which declares these, plus its measure (māna), is called āyurveda. This single verse is the source of four of the nine terms in this group.
Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana Lesson XXX (Arthedaśamahāmūlīya):within the passage printed up to Kaviratna's aphorism-marker 18 · checked against the source
As to Life : that in which (or, by which) Chetanci exists or follows), Jivitam, Anubandka, and Dhari, are words expressive of the same meaning.
A second, independent synonym-list for āyu in Charaka, this one headed by cetanānuvṛtti (continuation of consciousness) rather than by the body-senses-mind-self conjunction. 'Chetanci' and 'Anubandka' are OCR corruptions of Chetana and Anubandha; quoted exactly as retrieved. Kaviratna's own footnote on this passage confirms the correct reading is 'Chetananuvrittih'.
Ashtanga HridayaSutrasthana 1 (Āyuṣkāmīya Adhyāya) · address only, nothing quoted to check
Vagbhata's opening chapter is titled for the desire for āyu (Āyuṣkāmīya) and grounds the four puruṣārthas on it. Recorded as a location only: no quotation is given because Ashtanga Hridaya has no public-domain English translation, and the Sanskrit line I saw on the retrieved page carried a verse number I could not check against a critical edition.
Not to be confused with
- jīvita
- Listed in Su 1.42 as one of several synonyms (paryāya) of āyu, not as an equivalent term in its own right. Treating jīvita as interchangeable with āyu loses the point of the verse, which is that āyu has several aspects each named separately.
- prāṇa
- Prāṇa is vital breath / a vāta subtype, a physiological entity. Āyu is the conjunction of body, senses, mind and self as a whole. English 'life' covers both, which is precisely why the English is unsafe.
- āyurveda
- Āyu is the object; āyurveda is the knowledge of it. Su 1.41 and 1.42 are consecutive and define the pair in that order.
- āyuṣya
- A separate WHO-listed term (ITA entries āyuṣyam / anāyuṣyam appear in the WHO index), meaning life-promoting or conducive to longevity - an adjective of things, not the noun for life itself.
Renderings that do not hold
- lifespan. Su 1.42 defines āyu structurally (a conjunction of four constituents), not temporally. Kaviratna's own footnote concedes 'Ayush' can mean period of life but says that 'generally, however, it stands for Life'. Rendering it as lifespan silently picks the minority sense.
- age. Conflates āyu with vayas (age/stage of life), a distinct term.
- soul. Ātman is one of the four constituents of āyu, not āyu itself.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Does NAMASTE carry a code for āyu, and what English term does it assign? The portal is a single-page app that returns a shell to a plain fetch and its API paths 302-redirect; the underlying terminology table was not retrievable.
- Kaviratna's aphorism numbering in Sutrasthana 1 runs one behind the modern vulgate in this region (his 40/41/42 = modern 1.41/1.42/1.43). I confirmed the offset by matching his English against the Devanagari of 1.41, 1.42 and 1.43 individually. Whether the offset holds across the whole chapter is unverified.
- nia.nic.in/pdf/TERMINOLOGIES.pdf (390 pp.) has still never been opened and may carry a competing Indian national rendering.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, āyus / āyu
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/ayu/, 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.