lavaṇa: what the term means and how it is translated

lavaṇa लवण 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.

Identification
Transliteration	lavaṇa
Devanagari	लवण
Also written	lavana, lavaṃ
Category, as gathered	rasa (taste); one of the six rasas; also 'salt' as a substance class (lavaṇa varga)
Grouped here under	Pharmacology and the action of substances
Classical citations	3
Citations checked	2026-10-07

How it is translated, and whether the translation holds

Each rendering is given with the source that uses it. The assessment is ours.

Salty

WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022), entries DG0146, DG0147, SK0113 · DG0146 lavaṇa: 'Salty; one of the six rasa.' DG0147 lavaṇa: 'Salt; e.g. common table salt, rock salt'. SK0113 lavaṇa rasa: 'Salty taste'. DG0148 lavaṇa skandha: 'Class of different salts;' · comparator standard

Comparator; WHO distinguishes the rasa from the substance in two consecutive codes.

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.

saltish / Saline

Kaviratna, Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana Lesson XXVI · archive.org BIUSante_47357, printed pp. 296-297 (list) and 310-311 (effects) · public-domain translation

Uses 'saltish' in the list of six and 'The Saline Taste' in the effects paragraph; 'Rock-salt, though saline in taste, is not of heating energy' in the vīrya exceptions.

saline (Lavana)

Bhishagratna, Sushruta Samhita, Sutrasthana ch. XLII · wisdomlib doc141672; Wikisource djvu/489 (printed p. 385) · public-domain translation

Consistently 'saline'; 'Saline Group' for the lavaṇa varga of salts.

saline, salt, briny, brinish

Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), p. 898 · dictionary

Also records 'saltness, saline taste' as a noun.

Salty / Salt taste

Common textbook rendering · textbook · our paraphrase of the source, not its words

Uncontroversial; the live question is the substance/taste ambiguity, not the English word.

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 26:9 (standard) · checked against the source

षडेव रसा इत्युवाच भगवानात्रेयः पुनर्वसुः, मधुराम्ललवणकटुतिक्तकषायाः|

tr. Sanskrit quoted; English by Kaviratna · source

Lavaṇa is the third of Atreya's six rasas. Kaviratna: 'They are sweet, sour, saltish, pungent, bitter, and astringent.'

Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana 26:43 sub-paragraph (3) standard; Kaviratna prints 61 after the actions and 62 (inferred from sequence, OCR unclear) after the excess-effects · checked against the source

लवणो रसः पाचनः क्लेदनो दीपनश्च्यावनश्छेदनो भेदनस्तीक्ष्णः सरो विकास्यधःस्रंस्यवकाशकरो वातहरः स्तम्भबन्धसङ्घातविधमनः सर्वरसप्रत्यनीकभूतः, ... नात्यर्थं गुरुः स्निग्ध उष्णश्च|

tr. Sanskrit quoted; English by Kaviratna · source

Actions of lavaṇa and its guṇas (not excessively guru, snigdha, uṣṇa). Kaviratna: 'The Saline Taste digests (the bad humours), generates impurities, promotes the appetite, expels stools, cuts away and removes by force (adherent phlegm and other humours), and purges the intestines after making the stools watery. ... It overwhelms all other Tastes. ... It is heavy, oily, and warm, but not excessively so.' His footnote admits 'There are many words in this aphorism that are, rather, of doubtful import.'

Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 42:not established (Bhishagratna prints none) · checked against the source

A taste, which imparts a greater relish to food, produces salivation and softness of a part, is called saline (Lavana).

tr. Bhishagratna · source

Sushruta's recognition criterion. Same chapter: 'A saline taste is mostly endued with attributes which characterise the elements of water and fire.' and 'A saline taste is possessed of corrective (purgative and emetic) virtues, favours the processes of suppuration and spontaneous bursting of swellings, brings about the looseness or resolution of any affected part (ulcer), is heat-engendering in its property and proves incompatible with all other tastes.'

Not to be confused with

lavaṇa (salt, the substance) and lavaṇa varga: WHO splits DG0146 (taste) from DG0147 (salt). Charaka's exceptions make the point: 'Rock-salt, though saline in taste, is not of heating energy' (Kaviratna, standard 26.42 region), so a salt need not carry the rasa's typical vīrya.
kṣāra (alkali): Ca.Su. 26.9 explicitly denies kṣāra the status of a rasa ('क्षरणात् क्षारः, नासौ रसः'); it is a substance, chiefly kaṭu-lavaṇa, not a seventh taste (Nimi's view, rejected).
amla (sour): Both are uṣṇa and vāta-pacifying and often paired; Sushruta assigns amla to pṛthvī + agni and lavaṇa to jala + agni.

Renderings that do not hold

sodium / salt intake. Modern clinical papers read lavaṇa as dietary sodium; the rasa is a sensory-pharmacological category covering several salts and non-salt substances.

How to cite this entry

Age Ayurveda Nighantu, lavaṇa, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/lavana/, 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.