# dehaprakṛti

> Canonical version of this page: https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/deha-prakriti/

An Ayurvedic technical term, rendered into English in 4 different ways.
The renderings do not agree, and the difference between them changes what the term is taken
to mean.

## Identification

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Transliteration | dehaprakṛti |
| Also written | śārīraprakṛti, doṣaprakṛti |
| Category, as gathered | prakriti |
| Grouped under | Regimen and constitution |
| Classical citations | 1 |
| 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.

### Body constitution with a predominance of dosha

WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-2.8.2 (doṣaprakṛti) · standard

WHO has NO entry spelled dehaprakṛti anywhere. Its nearest headword is doṣaprakṛti.

Reproduced unaltered and attributed from the WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda, which is what that
licence permits, and deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is CC BY 4.0.

### deha prakriti / human constitution

Anc Sci Life 1994 · PMID 22556666 · paper · our paraphrase of the source, not its words

Title evidence that the compound is current in Indian academic writing even though absent from the samhitas.

### body constitution

Glob Adv Health Med 2012 · PMID 27257530 · paper · our paraphrase of the source, not its words

The reliability literature uses 'body constitution' and 'Deha Prakriti' interchangeably.

### physical constitution

Indian Ayurvedic college usage · textbook · our paraphrase of the source, not its words

The compound exists chiefly to form a contrast pair with mānasaprakṛti; its work is contrastive, not descriptive.

## The classical passages

### Charaka Samhita Vimanasthana 8:95, checked against the source

> tataḥ sā sā dōṣaprakr̥tirucyatē manuṣyāṇāṁ garbhādipravr̥ttā||95||

Sanskrit mūla · https://www.carakasamhitaonline.com/index.php/Rogabhishagjitiya_Vimana

The compound Charaka uses for bodily constitution is doṣaprakṛti, not dehaprakṛti. Recorded as the nearest attested term and as evidence of what deha-prakriti stands in for.

## Not to be confused with

- **doṣaprakṛti.** The attested classical compound for the same thing; deha-prakriti is on present evidence a later convenience term.
- **mānasaprakṛti.** The contrast partner. The deha/mānasa split is not how Vi 8 organises the examination, which handles body under prakṛti/sāra/saṁhanana/pramāṇa and mind under sattva.
- **prakṛti.** WHO makes prakṛti superordinate; using deha-prakriti as its synonym erases the hierarchy.
- **śarīra-sampat.** WHO ITA-3.1.4, a state of all dhātus functioning normally, not a constitutional type.

## Renderings that do not hold

- physical body type. Somatotype error, plus the implication of a purely physical constitution separable from sattva, which Charaka Sharirasthana 4/36 denies.
- treating deha-prakriti as a classical Charaka term. It is not, in any passage retrieved. Charaka's word is doṣaprakṛti.

## Open questions

Recorded rather than resolved.

- Where does dehaprakṛti first appear? Candidates are the commentators or the later textbook tradition, none retrieved.

## Citation

Age Ayurveda Nighantu, "dehaprakṛti", https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/deha-prakriti/, CC BY 4.0.
Whole lexicon: https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon.json and https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon.csv.

Educational reference only. A term entry explains what a word means and how it has been
translated. Nothing here is advice.