# rātricaryā (रात्रिचर्या)

> Canonical version of this page: https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/ratricharya/

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 | rātricaryā |
| Devanagari | रात्रिचर्या |
| Category, as gathered | swasthavritta |
| Grouped under | Regimen and constitution |
| Classical citations | 2 |
| 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.

### Night regimen, regimens starting from dawn to night. It includes Dinner, Sleep and cohabitation.

WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022), SV0213 · PDF p.259 (mirror copy) · comparator

'from dawn to night' appears to be an error for dusk; recorded as printed.

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.

### Ratricharya (night regimen)

Review article: Bharath M.S. et al., Int J Ayurvedic & Herbal Medicine 7(5), 2017 (doi 10.18535/ijahm/v7i5.01) · jssayurvedacollege.org PDF · modern review (non-PubMed)

Its classical references are to Yogaratnakara Purvardha 'Rathricharya vidhi' and Bhavaprakasha Purvardha, plus Charaka chapters 7, 8, 21 for component rules.

### structured lifestyle regimens (Dinacharya/Ratricharya)

PubMed usage (PMID 42739755) · textbook

Used as a paired label with dinacharya.

### no rendering: the term was not found in either translation

Kaviratna / Bhishagratna · public-domain translation · our paraphrase of the source, not its words

Grep of the full Kaviratna OCR found no 'ratricharya'/'night regimen'; the Sushruta Chikitsa XXIV hygiene chapter speaks of night only in prohibitions ('One should not stir out at night').

## The classical passages

### Yogaratnakara Pūrvārdha Rātricaryā-vidhi (as cited by Bharath et al. 2017, refs 2-6, 12-14, Lakshmipathi Shastri ed., Chaukhambha, p.82), address only, nothing quoted to check

That a late medieval compendium has a section titled Rātricaryā-vidhi. I did not retrieve the Yogaratnakara text itself; this is a citation of a citation.

### Sushruta Samhita Chikitsasthana XXIV:Sanskrit verse numbers not established, checked against the source

> One should not stir out at night nor walk about in the grounds of public executions

tr. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna · https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/sushruta-samhita-volume-4-cikitsasthana/d/doc142934.html

That Sushruta's hygiene chapter contains night-specific conduct rules, without using any term for 'night regimen'.

## Not to be confused with

- **dinacaryā.** Daily regimen (WHO SV0089); ratricharya is a modern pedagogical split of the evening/night portion, not a separate classical doctrine in the Brihattrayi as far as retrieved.
- **nidrā.** Sleep is one component of the night regimen (with dinner and cohabitation per WHO), not its equivalent.
- **rātrijāgaraṇa.** Night wakefulness, the pathological opposite (PMID 34949524), sometimes misfiled under ratricharya searches.

## Renderings that do not hold

- 'regimens starting from dawn to night' (WHO SV0213). Internally inconsistent with 'night regimen'; almost certainly a slip for dusk. Record as a WHO defect, not a doctrine.

## Open questions

Recorded rather than resolved.

- Does the compound rātricaryā occur anywhere in Charaka, Sushruta or Ashtanga Hridaya? Grep of Kaviratna found nothing, but a Sanskrit full-text search (e.g. NIIMH e-Samhita) was not completed because the site's chapter URLs could not be resolved.
- Verify the Yogaratnakara Rātricaryā-vidhi section directly in a Sanskrit edition.

## Citation

Age Ayurveda Nighantu, "rātricaryā", https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/ratricharya/, 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.