dehaprakṛti: what the term means and how it is translated
dehaprakṛti 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 | dehaprakṛti |
|---|---|
| Also written | śārīraprakṛti, doṣaprakṛti |
| Category, as gathered | prakriti |
| Grouped here 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. It is deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is offered under CC BY 4.0 and invites the modification a NoDerivs licence forbids.
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
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 8:95 · checked against the source
tataḥ sā sā dōṣaprakr̥tirucyatē manuṣyāṇāṁ garbhādipravr̥ttā||95||
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. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Where does dehaprakṛti first appear? Candidates are the commentators or the later textbook tradition, none retrieved.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, dehaprakṛti
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/deha-prakriti/, 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.