vayas: what the term means and how it is translated
vayas वयस् is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 4 different ways across 6 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 | vayas |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | वयस् |
| Also written | vayaḥ, vaya, vayah |
| Category, as gathered | prakriti |
| Grouped here under | Regimen and constitution |
| 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.
Age
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-2.9.1 (vayaḥ/kālaḥ) · standard
WHO publishes this headword with an EMPTY description and pairs vayaḥ with kālaḥ. It sits under the section heading '2.9 Inevitable life events'.
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.
age
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.7.5 item 10 · standard
The tenth and last examination item.
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.
Senility
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-2.9.2 (vārdhakyam) · standard
The only life stage WHO describes in detail, with a long clinical list ending 'aggravated vata'. WHO gives no entries for bālya or madhya-vaya.
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.
Age
Charaka Samhita, tr. Kaviratna (1896-1913) · Vimanasthana 8 · translation
'That condition of the body which is dependent on the measure of Time (for which the body has existed) is called Age.'
Boyhood, Manhood, and Decrepitude
Charaka Samhita, tr. Kaviratna (1896-1913) · Vimanasthana 8 · translation
For bāla, madhya and jīrṇa. 'Decrepitude' is harsher than jīrṇa warrants, and 'Boyhood'/'Manhood' impose a male default the Sanskrit does not.
age / life stage
Indian Ayurvedic college usage · textbook · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
Uncontroversial; the difficulty in this term is the stage boundaries, not the English word.
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 SamhitaVimanasthana 8:122 · checked against the source
vayastaścēti kālapramāṇaviśēṣāpēkṣiṇī hi śarīrāvasthā vayō'bhidhīyatē| tadvayō yathāsthūlabhēdēna trividhaṁ- bālaṁ, madhyaṁ, jīrṇamiti| tatra bālamaparipakvadhātumajātavyañjanaṁ sukumāramaklēśasahamasampūrṇabalaṁ ślēṣmadhātuprāyamāṣōḍaśavarṣaṁ||122||
vayas is a state of the body indexed to elapsed time; three stages bāla, madhya, jīrṇa; bāla runs to sixteen with immature dhātus and kapha predominance, with a sub-stage to thirty. The same verse continues: madhya to sixty with pitta predominance, then jīrṇa to a hundred with vāta predominance.
Charaka SamhitaVimanasthana 8:122 · checked against the source
That condition of the body which is dependent on the measure of Time (for which the body has existed) is called Age. This Age, according to difference of duration, is of three kinds, viz., Boyhood, Manhood, and Decrepitude. Amongst these, Boyhood is (the period characterised by) immaturity of the constituent elements (of the body), non-appearance of hirsute appendage, delicacy (of constitution both physical and mental), incapacity to bear fatigue (and the pain it brings about), non-development of strength, and predominance of phlegm.
Public-domain English for Vi 8/122, including the stage boundaries at 16, 30, 60 and 100 years.
Charaka SamhitaVimanasthana 8:122 · checked against the source
In this epoch {kali), the measure of (human) life, is a century. There are men who live more than a hundred years or less than that period. As regards this last class of persons, disregarding all incidents that are abnormal, noting only the diversities of the strength of Nature and the rest, the physician should ascertain the measure of life from the (usual) indications, and divide it into the three periods (named).
The stage boundaries are proportional, not absolute: for a person whose estimated lifespan is not a hundred years, the physician rescales the three periods. Kaviratna's footnote works the arithmetic, for a 120-year life, boyhood ends at 36 and manhood at 72. This proportionality is almost never reproduced in modern summaries, which quote 16/30/60/100 as fixed.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 35 · checked against the source
An intelligent physician should regard the organism of a man of twenty-five or of a woman of sixteen years of age, as fully developed in respect of the maturity of the seven fundamental principles of the body such as, serum, blood, etc.
Sushruta gives sex-differentiated maturity ages where Charaka's Vi 8/122 boundaries are undifferentiated. A second independent disagreement between the samhitas on this term. No verse numbers on the retrieved page.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 35 · checked against the source
A physician should first observe the vital condition (Ayu) of the patient before commencing the medical treatment. After that, the nature of the disease, the country and season of the year in which it has made its appearance, as well as the state of digestion, age, body, strength, disposition, habit, previous medicine, natural temperament and the power of endurance of the patient, etc. should be observed and carefully examined.
Sushruta's own examination list includes age among a dozen factors but is not the same list as Charaka Vi 8/94 and is not called daśavidha parīkṣā. Modern writing that presents the ten-fold examination as pan-classical should be checked against this.
Not to be confused with
- āyus
- Lifespan, the quantity; vayas is the stage. Sushruta Sutrasthana 35 tells the physician to assess āyu first and lists age separately.
- kāla
- WHO pairs vayaḥ/kālaḥ as one headword, but Vimana 8 distinguishes them: after the vayas section the text says time is of two kinds, the year and the age of the patient. Collapsing them loses the seasonal axis.
- jarā / vārdhakya
- The third stage and its pathology. WHO describes vārdhakyam fully while leaving vayaḥ empty, inverting the classical emphasis.
- vāyu
- Purely a transliteration hazard: vaya and vayu differ by one letter in unmarked Latin script and both are common headwords.
- bāla as 'child patient'
- Kaumārabhṛtya's bāla is a patient category with its own therapeutics; Vi 8/122's bāla is a stage of any patient's life used to modulate dose.
Renderings that do not hold
- chronological age. Vi 8/122 defines vayas as a state of the body indexed to time and then makes the boundaries proportional to estimated lifespan. It is not a count of years.
- the three ages are 0-16, 16-60, 60-100. Drops the sub-stage to thirty and, more importantly, the rescaling instruction for people whose lifespan is not a century.
- Decrepitude. Kaviratna's word for jīrṇa; pejorative in modern English where the Sanskrit is descriptive.
- childhood is kapha, adulthood pitta, old age vata as a constitutional fact. Vi 8/122 says these doṣas predominate in the STAGES. That is not a statement about a person's prakṛti, and the two are separate examination items.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- Charaka's stages are undifferentiated by sex; Sushruta gives 25 and 16. Do the commentators reconcile these?
- Does any modern work test the proportional-rescaling rule, or is it universally ignored?
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, vayas
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/vaya/, 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.