picchila: what the term means and how it is translated

picchila पिच्छिल 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	picchila
Devanagari	पिच्छिल
Also written	pichchila, picchila guṇa, paicchilya / picchilatva (abstract)
Category, as gathered	guṇa (one of the twenty gurvādi guṇas; opposite of viśada)
Grouped here under	Pharmacology and the action of substances
Classical citations	4
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.

Slimy touch, gummy, Sticky, Sliminess

WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022), entries AF1520 picchila and BP0193 picchilaḥ · AF1520 picchila: 'Slimy touch, gummy, Sticky, Sliminess,'. BP0193 picchilaḥ: 'the property of the substance which causes Slimness and stickiness'. WHO's ojas attribute list reads '...Picchila (sticky), Snigdha (unctuous).' · comparator standard

Comparator; note the WHO entries are filed under symptom (AF) and basic-principle (BP) sections rather than DG, and no dedicated DG gurvādi entry for picchila was found in the extracted text.

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.

slimy

Kaviratna, Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana Lesson I (standard 1.61) · archive.org BIUSante_47357 · public-domain translation

'Heavy, cold, mild, watery, sweet, stable, and slimy, these attributes of phlegm'.

Sliminess

Bhishagratna, Sushruta Samhita, Sutrasthana ch. XLII and XLVI · wisdomlib doc141672 and doc141678; archive.org in.ernet.dli.2015.43171 printed pp. 567-568 · public-domain translation

'Sweetness, oiliness, heaviness, coldness and sliminess form the specific properties of Kapha.' 'Sliminess is vitalising, tonic, heavy as regards digestion, and tends to produce Kapha, and brings about the adhesion of fractured bones.' Opposite rendered 'non-sliminess' or 'The quality of absorption (Vishad)'.

slimy, lubricous, slippery, smeary (opp. to viśada)

Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), p. 624 · dictionary

Dictionary already records the technical opposition to viśada.

Slimy / sticky / mucilaginous

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

'Mucilaginous' is a pharmacognostic gloss; 'sticky/slimy' are the usual.

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 1:61 (standard; Kaviratna's number by sequence 60, OCR '80') · checked against the source

गुरुशीतमृदुस्निग्धमधुरस्थिरपिच्छिलाः| श्लेष्मणः प्रशमं यान्ति विपरीतगुणैर्गुणाः||६१||

tr. Sanskrit quoted; English by Kaviratna · source

Picchila is the last-named attribute of kapha. Kaviratna: '...stable, and slimy, these attributes of phlegm are cured by objects having adverse attributes.'

Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana 26:11 (standard; Kaviratna 23) · checked against the source

द्रवस्निग्धशीतमन्दमृदुपिच्छिलरसगुणबहुलान्याप्यानि, तान्युपक्लेदस्नेहबन्धविष्यन्दमार्दवप्रह्लादकराणि;

tr. Sanskrit quoted · source

Picchila is one of the six gunas (drava, snigdha, śīta, manda, mṛdu, picchila, plus the rasa-guna) that mark jala-dominant substances, whose actions include bandha (binding). Kaviratna (Su. Lesson XXVI, his 23, p. 300) renders the list 'liquid, oily, cold, mild, soft, unctious, and mobile': 'unctious', after 'oily' (snigdha), is his word for picchila, so he does render it distinctly; it is the rasa-guna that has no counterpart, 'mobile' standing in its place. He renders bandha as 'stoppage of secretions'.

Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 46:517 (numbering as printed in the web Sanskrit text; verify in a printed edition) · checked against the source

पिच्छिलो जीवनो बल्यः सन्धानः श्लेष्मलो गुरुः | विशदो विपरीतोऽस्मात् क्लेदाचूषणरोपणः ||५१७||

tr. Sanskrit quoted; English by Bhishagratna · source

Sushruta's karma of picchila: jīvana, balya, sandhāna, śleṣmala, guru; viśada is its opposite. Bhishagratna: 'Sliminess is vitalising, tonic, heavy as regards digestion, and tends to produce Kapha, and brings about the adhesion of fractured bones. The quality of absorption (Vishad) is the opposite of sliminess. It absorbs or soaks up all mucous secretions and helps the process of healing a sore or ulcer.'

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

A pungent taste is endued with properties which are contrary to those of the Kapha, hence the sweetness, oiliness, heaviness, coldness and sliminess of the latter, are respectively destroyed by the pungency, dryness, lightness, heat and non-sliminess of the former.

tr. Bhishagratna · source

Picchila/viśada as a kapha-vs-kaṭu axis.

Not to be confused with

snigdha (unctuous): Both kapha attributes often glossed 'oily/sticky'; snigdha opposes rūkṣa (dry), picchila opposes viśada (clear/non-slimy). Sushruta separates their karmas (snigdha: lubrication, strength, complexion; picchila: binding, kapha, heaviness).
ślakṣṇa (smooth): Sushruta 46.521 says ślakṣṇa is 'to be known like picchila' (श्लक्ष्णः पिच्छिलवज्ज्ञेयः), i.e. similar in karma but a distinct guṇa opposing khara/karkaśa.
viśada: Its opposite; rendered 'clear' by Kaviratna (Ca.Su. 1.59) and 'absorption'/'non-sliminess' by Bhishagratna, so the English for the pair is unstable.
abhiṣyandī: A channel-clogging action often attributed to picchila foods; an effect, not the guṇa.

Renderings that do not hold

oily. Imports snigdha; WHO's own search snippet gloss 'oily, sticky' blurs the two. Picchila is about adhesion/viscosity, not lipid content.
'unctious' (Kaviratna, 26.11). His seven-word list for the eight-word Sanskrit drops picchila; do not cite that line as his rendering of picchila.

How to cite this entry

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