rogamārga: what the term means and how it is translated
rogamārga रोगमार्ग is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 4 different ways across 5 sources, 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 | rogamārga |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | रोगमार्ग |
| Also written | roga mārga, trayo rogamārgāḥ, bāhya / madhyama / ābhyantara rogamārga |
| Category, as gathered | pathology (topography of disease) |
| Grouped here under | Causation and the course of disease |
| Classical citations | 2 |
| 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.
The seats of disease are three. They are (1) Śākhā, (2) vital parts and bone-joints, and (3) Koshtha.
Charaka Samhita, tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna · Sūtrasthāna ch. 11, his verse 47 (= CS Sū. 11.48). OCR in the archive scan renders Śākhā as '£akha'. · public-domain-translation
Kaviratna chooses SEAT, not path, and says so explicitly in his footnote. This is the oldest quotable English decision on the term and it disagrees with every modern rendering.
'Marga' literally means path or way. In medical treatises, as applied to disease, it implies seat or the parts subject to disease.
Charaka Samhita, tr. Kaviratna — translator's footnote · footnote to Sūtrasthāna ch. 11, marked '*' on his verse 47 · public-domain-translation
An explicit translator's argument against the 'pathway' rendering. Worth putting in front of anyone who writes 'three pathways of disease' unreflectively.
three pathways of disease manifestation
Charak Samhita New Edition (CSRTSDC, 2020) online · Tistraishaniya Adhyaya, gloss on Sū. 11.48 · modern-edition · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
Paraphrased, NOT quoted: this translation is in copyright (CSRTSDC 2020, DOI-bearing). Recorded only as evidence of current usage. The Sanskrit on the same page is public domain and is quoted below.
no entry
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · searched: 'rogamārga', 'ogamārg', 'pathway' — no term entry for rogamārga exists in the document · who-ista
A negative finding, and a significant one: WHO standardises śākhā, koṣṭha and marma separately but not the triad that binds them.
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.
no entry
National Institute of Ayurveda / WHO-APW non-clinical terminologies glossary · searched 'rogamārga', 'roga mārga' — absent · glossary
Also absent from the Indian draft glossary.
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.
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 SamhitaSūtrasthāna 11 (Tistraiṣaṇīya):11.34 · checked against the source
अथ खलु त्रय उपस्तम्भाः, त्रिविधं बलं, त्रीण्यायतनानि, त्रयो रोगाः, त्रयो रोगमार्गाः, त्रिविधा भिषजः, त्रिविधमौषधमिति||३४||
The enumeration in which rogamārga first appears, one of a set of triads, alongside three upastambhas, three kinds of bala, three āyatanas, three rogas, three physicians, three therapies.
Charaka SamhitaSūtrasthāna 11 (Tistraiṣaṇīya):11.48 · checked against the source
त्रयो रोगमार्गा इति- शाखा, मर्मास्थिसन्धयः, कोष्ठश्च| तत्र शाखा रक्तादयो धातवस्त्वक् च, स बाह्यो रोगमार्गः; मर्माणि पुनर्बस्तिहृदयमूर्धादीनि, अस्थिसन्धयोऽस्थिसंयोगास्तत्रोपनिबद्धाश्च स्नायुकण्डराः, स मध्यमो रोगमार्गः; कोष्ठः पुनरुच्यते महास्रोतः शरीरमध्यं महानिम्नमामपक्वाशयश्चेति पर्यायशब्दैस्तन्त्रे, स रोगमार्ग आभ्यन्तरः||४८||
The full definition of all three rogamārgas, including the fact that koṣṭha is defined by a list of synonyms (mahāsrotas, śarīramadhya, mahānimna, āmapakvāśaya) and śākhā by rakta-and-other-dhātus plus skin. Note the Sanskrit as printed on this page has irregular spacing, preserved above as retrieved.
The concept record for this term
A term entry answers what the word means. It does not answer whether the thing the word names is settled, and often it is not. That is what the concept record is for: it sets out the questions on which the sources disagree about this term, with each position attributed, and states what is not established.
Not to be confused with
- srotas
- Srotas are the channels that carry and transform; rogamārga is a partition of the body into three regions where disease manifests. A dhātu can belong to śākhā (a rogamārga) while its srotas is named separately. Conflating them is the commonest error in review articles.
- doṣagati
- Doṣagati is the MOVEMENT of doṣa (koṣṭha to śākhā and back, CS Sū. 28.31-33); rogamārga is the static topography. The two are related in Charaka's own text but are distinct concepts and distinct verses.
- marma
- Marma is one constituent of the madhyama rogamārga (together with asthi-sandhi, snāyu and kaṇḍarā). It is not a synonym for the middle pathway.
- samprāpti
- Samprāpti is the process of pathogenesis over time; rogamārga is where it lands. A prognosis claim built on rogamārga is a claim about site, not about mechanism.
Renderings that do not hold
- three routes of disease transmission. Imports an epidemiological sense of 'route'. Rogamārga is internal topography, not how disease passes between people.
- three channels of disease. Collapses rogamārga into srotas. Charaka names them separately and defines koṣṭha by synonyms that are cavities, not channels, though mahāsrotas is one of those synonyms, which is exactly why the confusion persists.
- superficial / intermediate / deep. Depth is the wrong axis. Koṣṭha, the 'internal' mārga, is the most accessible to śodhana therapy; madhyama, the 'middle' one, is the gravest. A depth reading inverts the prognostic ordering.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Does Sushruta have an equivalent tripartition? Not located; the term rogamārga appears to be Charaka's.
- Is there any published inter-rater reliability study for assigning a patient's disease to a rogamārga? None found on PubMed/Europe PMC.
- Whether the Baghel Prakash Prognosis Scoring System (PMID 36403500), which generates prognosis items from the classics, includes a rogamārga item, its abstract does not say, and the full text was not retrieved.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, rogamārga
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/roga-marga/, 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.