manda: what the term means and how it is translated

manda मन्द 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	manda
Devanagari	मन्द
Also written	mandatā, mandāgni (compound: weak digestion)
Category, as gathered	guṇa (one of the twenty gurvādi guṇas; opposite of tīkṣṇa)
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.

Dull/sluggish

WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022), entry DG0170 manda · DG0170: 'Dull/sluggish; One of the 20 gurvadi gunās. Caused due activated pṛthvī & jala mahābhuta; denotes physiological & pharmacological slowing down of processes; instrumental for palliative therapy; pacifies pitta, increases kapha.' WHO's kapha attribute list also reads 'Guru (heavy), Manda (dull), Hima (cold)...'. A separate BK0098 manda is the rice-gruel. · comparator standard

Comparator; WHO carries two homonyms (guṇa and gruel) under separate 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.

mild

Kaviratna, Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana Lesson XXVI (his 22-23; standard 26.11) · archive.org BIUSante_47357, printed p. 300 · public-domain translation

'heavy, sharp or pungent, hard, mild, immobile, clear, thick, gross' (pārthiva) and 'liquid, oily, cold, mild, soft, unctious, and mobile' (āpya): manda = 'mild', mṛdu = 'soft'. He also uses 'mild' for mṛdu elsewhere (Lesson I kapha list; the eight vīryas), so 'mild' is ambiguous in his text.

Narcotism

Bhishagratna, Sushruta Samhita, Sutrasthana ch. XLVI · archive.org in.ernet.dli.2015.43171 printed p. 568; wisdomlib doc141678 · public-domain translation

'Laxativeness restores the normal condition of the humours. Narcotism changes the condition of vitality.' is his rendering of 'saro 'nulomanaḥ prokto, mando yātrākaraḥ smṛtaḥ' (46.522). 'Narcotism' for manda is an Edwardian choice with no basis in the Sanskrit, which says manda sustains (yātrākara) life; a human should confirm the Sanskrit before any use.

slow, tardy... dull, faint (as light)... feeble (as the digestive faculty)

Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), p. 787 · dictionary

Records the mandāgni sense explicitly.

Slow / dull

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

Standard in gurvādi tables; 'slow' is closest to the pharmacological sense.

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 26:11 (standard; Kaviratna prints 22 and 23) · checked against the source

तत्रद्रव्याणिगुरुखरकठिनमन्दस्थिरविशदसान्द्रस्थूलगन्धगुणबहुलानि पार्थिवानि, तान्युपचयसङ्घातगौरवस्थैर्यकराणि; द्रवस्निग्धशीतमन्दमृदुपिच्छिलरसगुणबहुलान्याप्यानि, तान्युपक्लेदस्नेहबन्धविष्यन्दमार्दवप्रह्लादकराणि;

tr. Sanskrit quoted; English by Kaviratna · source

Manda is an attribute of both pṛthvī- and jala-dominant substances. Kaviratna: 'Amongst objects those that are principally heavy, sharp or pungent, hard, mild, immobile, clear, thick, gross, and possessed of scent, are regarded as appertaining to Earth.'

Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 46:521 (printed ५२१ in the Trikamji/Nirnaya Sagar ed., Su.Sū.46; the manda half-line shares the number with the vyavāyī half-line. The web texts' 522 reflects a different hemistich pairing, not a different text.) · checked against the source

सरोऽनुलोमनः प्रोक्तो, मन्दो यात्राकरः स्मृतः ॥ व्यवायी चाखिलं देहं व्याप्य पाकाय कल्पते ॥५२१॥

tr. Sanskrit quoted; English by Bhishagratna · source

Sushruta's one-line karma of manda: 'mando yātrākaraḥ smṛtaḥ'. Dalhaṇa (Nibandhasaṅgraha, ad loc.) glosses it 'yātrākara iti śarīrasthāyitvād dehasya yātrāṃ vartanaṃ karoti', manda is yātrākara because, by making the body persist, it carries on the body's course (vartana). The record's working gloss 'sustaining the body's course' is now the commentator's own, not an inference; and the verse number is 521 in the printed edition, 522 only in the web Sanskrit texts.

Aṣṭāṅga HṛdayaSutrasthana 1:18 (as printed on easyayurveda.com) · address only, nothing quoted to check

Manda is the second named guṇa in Vagbhata's list of ten-with-opposites (guru, manda, hima, snigdha, ślakṣṇa, sāndra, mṛdu, sthira, sūkṣma, viśada). No public-domain English; no quotation.

Not to be confused with

mṛdu (soft/mild): Kaviratna renders both as 'mild' in different places; manda pairs with tīkṣṇa (sharp/quick), mṛdu with kaṭhina (hard). Note Charaka's list in 26.11 gives manda and mṛdu side by side for āpya substances, and the WHO kapha list uses 'Mṛtsna (soft)' alongside 'Manda (dull)'.
maṇḍa (rice gruel): Homonym with retroflex ṇ (WHO SV0160 maṇḍa; BK0098 manda 'a gruel of rice by adding 14 times of water'); Bhishagratna's ch. 46 uses 'Manda' for the gruel too.
mandāgni: Compound meaning weak digestive fire; a clinical state, not the pharmacological guṇa.
sthira (stable): Both slow/immobile-flavoured kapha qualities; sthira opposes sara/cala (mobile), manda opposes tīkṣṇa.

Renderings that do not hold

Narcotism. Bhishagratna's rendering at Su.Su. 46.522; the Sanskrit (mando yātrākaraḥ) says nothing about narcosis.
mild. Kaviratna's choice; usable, but he uses the same word for mṛdu, so it cannot disambiguate.

How to cite this entry

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