viṣamāgni: what the term means and how it is translated
viṣamāgni विषमाग्नि is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 7 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 | viṣamāgni |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | विषमाग्नि |
| Also written | viṣama agni, viṣamo 'gniḥ, vātaja agni-doṣa |
| Category, as gathered | pathophysiology / functional state |
| Grouped here 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. It is deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is offered under CC BY 4.0 and invites the modification a NoDerivs licence forbids.
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. It is deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is offered under CC BY 4.0 and invites the modification a NoDerivs licence forbids.
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. It is deliberately absent from the downloadable dataset, which is offered under CC BY 4.0 and invites the modification a NoDerivs licence forbids.
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
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.
Sushruta SaṃhitāSūtrasthāna 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.
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
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 SaṃhitāSūtrasthāna 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.
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
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॥
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 ||
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. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- 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.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, viṣamāgni
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/vishama-agni/, 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.