roga: what the term means and how it is translated
roga रोगः is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 6 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.
| Transliteration | roga |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | रोगः |
| Also written | rog, rogaḥ, roga |
| Category, as gathered | disease-kinds |
| Grouped here under | Causation and the course of disease |
| Classical citations | 5 |
| 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.
Disorder, ailment
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.2.1, sense 8 of nine under the English headword 'Disease'. The Sanskrit list runs: 1 vyādhiḥ; 2 āmayaḥ; 3 gadaḥ; 4 ātaṅkaḥ; 5 yakṣmā, samuccaya; 6 jvara; 7 vikāraḥ; 8 roga; 9 pāpmā. · standard
WHO assigns roga the gloss 'Disorder, ailment' and vyādhi the gloss 'Disease, a condition which causes various types of pain and distress to the body and mind'. So WHO does implicitly differentiate them, against Cha.Ni.1/5, by giving each a distinct sense line.
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.
Diagnosis
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.1.1, Sanskrit headwords vyādhiviniścayaḥ, rogaviniścayaḥ (व्याधिविनिश्चयः, रोगविनिश्चयः) · standard
Both compounding elements are offered as alternatives here, confirming that WHO treats them as interchangeable in compounds even while giving them different sense lines at 4.2.1.
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 compounding element in essentially every disease-class entry)
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.2.4 to ITA-4.2.36: dvividha-mānasika-rogaḥ, rājasarogaḥ, tāmasarogaḥ, trividha-śārīrika-rogaḥ, āgneyarogaḥ, saumyarogaḥ, vāyavyarogaḥ, ādhyātmikarogaḥ, ādibalapravṛttarogaḥ, ādhibhautikarogaḥ, ādhidaivikarogaḥ, svabhāvabalapravṛttarogaḥ, sādhyarogaḥ and the rest · standard
A structural finding, verified by reading section 4.2 of the extracted text end to end: WHO ISTA builds its disease-CLASS names on -roga and reserves vyādhi- for meta-terms about disease (vyādhibhedaḥ 'Types of disease', vyādhisaṅkaraḥ 'Comorbidity', vyādhiviniścayaḥ 'Diagnosis'). That division of labour is the only defensible vyadhi/roga distinction I found anywhere, and it is a fact about WHO usage, not about the classical texts.
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 same word Roga ( disease ) is applied to faults ( wind, bile, and phlegm ) as also to disorders affecting the body.
Charaka Samhita, trans. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna · Vimana Sthana ch. 6, aphorism 5 · translation (public domain)
The most interesting rendering in this record: Charaka uses roga for the DOSHAS as well as for diseases. No modern English rendering of roga preserves this.
'Roga' is from 'Ruj' meaning 'to pain.' Hence it means anything that pains.
Charaka Samhita, trans. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna · translator's footnote to Vimana Sthana ch. 6 · translation (public domain)
Kaviratna's etymology. Compare his vyadhi etymology (from vyadh, to beat), which sets up a real semantic contrast: roga = what pains, vyadhi = what strikes.
disease
common BAMS/textbook rendering · textbook usage · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
Universal, and used interchangeably with the rendering of vyadhi.
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 SamhitaNidana Sthana 1:5 · checked against the source
तत्र व्याधिरामयो गद आतङ्को यक्ष्मा ज्वरो विकारो रोग इत्यनर्थान्तरम्||५||
roga is listed last among eight terms declared anarthantaram. This is the controlling verse for the roga/vyadhi question.
Charaka SamhitaNidana Sthana 1:5 · checked against the source
In this connection it should be stated that the words 'Vyadhi', 'amaya', 'gada', 'atanka', 'yakshman', 'jwara', 'vikara', and 'roga', are of the same import.
Quotable English for Cha.Ni.1/5. Kaviratna numbers this within his aphorism 2; the verse number 5 is the modern one from the verified Sanskrit.
Charaka SamhitaVimana Sthana 6:4 · checked against the source
There are things that differ in meaning though named by the same words. There are also things that do not differ in meaning though named by different words. The same word Roga ( disease ) is applied to faults ( wind, bile, and phlegm ) as also to disorders affecting the body. Again, the faults receive these different appellations, viz., Roga, Atanka, Yakshma, Doshaprakriti, and Vikara. Diseases are also called by those very designations, viz., Roga, Atanka, Yakshma, Doshaprakriti, and Vikara. Thus, the word Roga applies equally to the faults and diseases. To the last, however, it applies especially.
Charaka's explicit statement that roga names both the doshas and the disorders, with a note that it applies to disorders 'especially'. The chapter and aphorism number come from the volume's own printed Abstract of Contents, which lists for Vimana Lesson VI 'The absence of difference between diseases and faults, and the synonymous character of the two terms (aphorisms 4 and 5)'.
Charaka SamhitaVimana Sthana 6:5 · checked against the source
It should be stated that diseases are countless in consequence of their very large number. The faults, however, are countable, in consequence of their not being many.
The one criterion Charaka gives for separating roga-as-disease from roga-as-dosha: countability. Diseases are innumerable, the doshas are few.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 24 · checked against the source
The nomenclature of a disease depends upon where the affection of the several elementary principles of the bod y by the deranged bodily humours lies, and which is accordingly styled as it is seated in the lymph-chyle, or in the blood or the flesh, or it is in fat, bone, or in the semen.
Sushruta's principle of disease naming: by dhatu of seat. Relevant to how roga-names are formed (rasaja, raktaja and so on). Quoted verbatim including the retrieved page's line-break artifact in 'bod y'.
Not to be confused with
- vyadhi
- Declared synonymous at Cha.Ni.1/5. The only observable difference is distributional: WHO ISTA builds disease-class names on -roga and meta-terms on vyādhi-, and the classical texts use vyādhi in the ashraya verse (Cha.Su.1/55) and roga in the classification verse (Cha.Su.11/45). Distribution, not denotation.
- dosha
- Cha.Vi.6/5 says roga names the doshas too. This is the most counterintuitive fact in the record and it means 'roga' cannot be safely glossed as 'disease as opposed to its cause' without qualification.
- vikara
- Another Cha.Ni.1/5 synonym, but vikara is also the term in the dhatu-vaishamya definition of disease and carries a general sense of 'modification'. It is the least safe of the eight to swap in.
- jvara
- Listed as a synonym of disease at Cha.Ni.1/5 while also being a specific disease (fever). WHO ISTA preserves this oddity at ITA-4.2.1 sense 6, glossing it 'Fever as a generic term for disease'. A term index that does not handle this will collide.
- agada
- 'Antidote', literally a-gada, not-disease. Built from gada, one of the eight synonyms. An easy false friend for anyone matching on substrings.
Renderings that do not hold
- disorder (as distinct from disease). WHO ISTA's own sense line for roga is 'Disorder, ailment' while vyādhi gets 'Disease'. Readers then infer a classical disease/disorder distinction. Cha.Ni.1/5 says there is none. WHO's split is an artifact of needing nine distinct sense lines in one entry.
- illness. In medical anthropology 'illness' is the experienced condition as against 'disease' the biomedical entity. Mapping roga to illness and vyadhi to disease invents a distinction the texts do not make, in the direction opposite to WHO's.
- sickness. Same problem; 'sickness' carries a social-role sense in medical sociology.
- pain. An over-literal reading of Kaviratna's etymology (roga from ruj, to pain). The etymology is his note; the term denotes the condition, not the sensation. Ayurveda has ample vocabulary for pain itself (shula, vedana, ruja).
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Does the Sanskrit of Cha.Vi.6/4-5 use roga in the way Kaviratna's English implies, or is his 'the same word Roga is applied to faults' an interpretive expansion? I retrieved only his English for this passage, never the Sanskrit. This needs checking before the claim is published.
- Kaviratna's aphorism numbering in Vimana Sthana is taken from his own Abstract of Contents, not from a numbered verse in the body text. The chapter is certain; the verse numbers 5 and 6 should be confirmed against a numbered edition.
- Is WHO ISTA's roga/vyādhi distribution deliberate editorial policy or an accident of how the term list was assembled?
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, roga
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/roga/, 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.