# viṣamāgni (विषमाग्नि)

> Canonical version of this page: https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/vishama-agni/

An Ayurvedic technical term, rendered into English in 7 different ways.
The renderings do not agree, and the difference between them changes what the term is taken
to mean.

## Identification

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Transliteration | viṣamāgni |
| Devanagari | विषमाग्नि |
| Also written | viṣama agni, viṣamo 'gniḥ, vātaja agni-doṣa |
| Category, as gathered | pathophysiology / functional state |
| Grouped under | Body: tissues, wastes and channels |
| Classical citations | 6 |
| 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.

### Irregular state of digestive, metabolic factors

WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-2.6.10 · terminology-standard

WHO description verbatim: 'A state in which the action of transformative factor is rendered erratic (either excessive, diminished or fluctuating) due to the dominant influence of vata.'

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.

### Irregular digestive, metabolic factors

WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-5.11.3 (in the Indigestion section of the disorders chapter) · terminology-standard

WHO lists viṣamāgni TWICE, once as a physiological state (ITA-2.6.10) and once as a disorder (ITA-5.11.3) with a full symptom list. The disorder entry reads: 'A disorder characterized by some or all the following signs and symptoms: ability to digest properly at times proper digestion of food of varied quantity and improper digestion in spite of proper quantity of food; abdominal distension; colicky pain in abdomen; upward movement of gases with retention of stool and urine; diarrhoea; heaviness in the abdomen; borborygmi/gurgling intestinal sounds; straining at defecation.'

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.

### irregular digestive power

NAMASTE / National AYUSH Morbidity Codes (NAMC), Ministry of Ayush · NAMC code DB-2 (viShamAgniH / विषमाग्निः); NAMC cites Su.Su.35/24 and Ah.Sa.3/75 · terminology-standard

NAMASTE's own classical citations match the loci I independently verified, which is a useful cross-check on both.

Reproduced unaltered and attributed from the Government of India NAMASTE terminology, which is what that
licence permits, and deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is CC BY 4.0.

### Vishama'gni

Sushruta Samhita, tr. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna (1907-1916) · Sūtrasthāna Chapter XXXV, pp. 319-320 · public-domain-translation

Transliterated as a heading and defined in English. The fullest public-domain definition available.

### uneven

Charaka Samhita, tr. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna (1896-1913) · Vimānasthāna Lesson VI (= Ca.Vi.6.12) · public-domain-translation

Kaviratna's footnote: 'a digestive fire that is irregular is so called', so he offers 'uneven' in the text and 'irregular' in the gloss.

### irregular state of metabolic fire

Anc Sci Life 2015 (PMID 26283805) · abstract · secondary-literature

Verbatim from the abstract's parenthetical gloss.

### no ICD-11 TM2 category found

ICD-11 MMS v2026-01, TM2 · classification · our paraphrase of the source, not its words

SM3B Indigestion disorder (TM2) covers ajīrṇa/agnimāndya index terms but I found no viṣamāgni index term.

## The classical passages

### Sushruta Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna XXXV (Ātura-upakramaṇīya):24, checked against the source

> The digestive heat which is irregular in its action, and which sometimes helps the process of complete digestion, and produces distension of the abdomen, colic pain, constipation of the bowels, dysentery, ascites, heaviness of the limbs, rumbling in the intestines, and loose motions (diarrhoea) at other times, is called Vishamagni.

tr. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna · https://archive.org/stream/b24758619_0001/b24758619_0001_djvu.txt

The defining feature is alternation, not deficiency: it sometimes digests properly and sometimes produces this symptom set. WHO's ITA-5.11.3 symptom list is recognisably a modernisation of this same list.

### Sushruta Saṃhitā (Sanskrit) Sūtrasthāna 35:24, checked against the source

> यः कदाचित् सम्यक् पचति कदाचिदाध्मानशूलोदावर्तातिसारजठरगौरवान्त्रकूजनप्रवाहणानि कृत्वा स विषमः

tr. none (Sanskrit mūla) · https://sa.wikisource.org/wiki/सुश्रुतसंहिता/सूत्रस्थानम्/अध्याय_३१-४६

Sanskrit for the definition, fixing the verse number and showing that Bhishagratna's 'ascites' renders udara/jaṭhara-gaurava (heaviness of the abdomen), i.e. that his rendering over-reads.

### Sushruta Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna XXXV:25-26, checked against the source

> The digestive fire of the Vishama kind brings on diseases characterised by the derangement of the Vayu. ... The one known as Vishama (irregular) should be corrected by a diet consisting of emollient, acid or saline substances.

tr. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna · https://archive.org/stream/b24758619_0001/b24758619_0001_djvu.txt

Doṣa attribution (vāta) and the management principle (snigdha, amla, lavaṇa), both public domain.

### Charaka Saṃhitā (Sanskrit) Vimānasthāna 6:12, checked against the source

> समलक्षणविपरीतलक्षणस्तु विषम इति। ... वातलानां तु वाताभिभूतेऽग्न्यधिष्ठाने विषमा भवन्त्यग्नयः

tr. none (Sanskrit mūla) · https://www.siva.sh/caraka-samhita/vimana-sthana/6/12

Charaka defines viṣama purely negatively, 'having characteristics opposite to sama', and attributes it to vāta overwhelming agni's seat. He gives no symptom list here; Sushruta does.

### Charaka Saṃhitā (Sanskrit) Cikitsāsthāna 15:50, checked against the source

> विषमो धातुवैषम्यं करोति विषमं पचन्। तीक्ष्णो मन्देन्धनो धातून् विशोषयति पावकः॥५०॥

tr. none (Sanskrit mūla) · https://www.siva.sh/caraka-samhita/chikitsa-sthana/15/50

The downstream consequence: viṣamāgni, cooking unevenly, produces dhātu-vaiṣamya (tissue disequilibrium). This is the link from agni state to systemic pathology.

### Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya (Sanskrit) Śārīrasthāna 3:73, 75, checked against the source

> samaḥ samāne sthāna-sthe viṣamo 'gnir vi-mārga-ge || 73 || ... viṣamo '-samyag apy āśu samyag vāpi cirāt pacet || 75 ||

tr. none — no public-domain English translation of Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya exists · http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/corpustei/transformations/plaintext/sa_vAgbhaTa-aSTAGgahRdayasUtra.txt

Vāgbhaṭa's mechanism (samāna vāyu off its path) and his behavioural criterion (digests improper food quickly, or proper food only after long delay). NAMASTE cites Ah.Sa.3/75 for viṣamāgni, matching.

## Not to be confused with

- **mandāgni.** Sushruta's viṣama alternates between adequate and inadequate; manda is uniformly slow. WHO's ITA-2.6.10 muddies this by including 'diminished' inside the definition of erratic.
- **grahaṇī-roga.** Ca.Ci.15.71 makes viṣamāgni a grahaṇī-doṣa, but grahaṇī-roga is the manifest disease with its own symptom set; the agni state is the functional substrate.
- **viṣama-jvara (intermittent fever).** Same adjective, unrelated referent. NAMASTE has a whole series of viṣamajvara codes (EC-3.10.x) that a naive string match will confuse with DB-2.
- **viṣamāśana.** Irregular eating, a cause listed among the aetiologies (Ca.Ci.15.42 viṣamāśanāt), not the state itself.
- **IBS / functional dyspepsia.** A tempting biomedical mapping given the symptom overlap, but no study has tested the correspondence, and viṣamāgni is defined by digestive performance rather than by symptom duration criteria.

## Renderings that do not hold

- weak digestion. Confuses viṣama with manda. The defining feature is variability, not deficiency.
- irritable bowel syndrome. An unvalidated diagnostic equation. Sushruta's symptom list overlaps IBS but includes ascites/abdominal heaviness and the definition rests on inconsistent digestion, not on Rome criteria.
- erratic metabolism. Loses the gastrointestinal specificity that both Sushruta's symptom list and WHO's disorder entry (ITA-5.11.3) carry.

## Open questions

Recorded rather than resolved.

- Why does WHO define viṣamāgni twice with materially different emphases?
- Is there any study correlating viṣamāgni with objective gastric emptying or transit measures?
- Does Aṣṭāṅga Saṅgraha 6/32 and 6/70 (cited by NAMASTE) contain parallel definitions? I could not retrieve Aṣṭāṅga Saṅgraha.

## Citation

Age Ayurveda Nighantu, "viṣamāgni", https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/vishama-agni/, 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.