vyādhi: what the term means and how it is translated
vyādhi व्याधिः is an Ayurvedic technical term. It is rendered into English in 8 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 | vyādhi |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | व्याधिः |
| Also written | vyadhi, byadhi, vyādhiḥ |
| Category, as gathered | disease-kinds |
| Grouped here under | Causation and the course of disease |
| 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.
Disease, a condition which causes various types of pain and distress to the body and mind
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.2.1, English term 'Disease'. vyādhiḥ is listed as sense 1 of nine Sanskrit terms sharing this entry (vyādhiḥ, āmayaḥ, gadaḥ, ātaṅkaḥ, yakṣmā/samuccaya, jvara, vikāraḥ, roga, pāpmā). · standard
WHO does not give vyadhi its own entry. It bundles nine Sanskrit terms under one English headword 'Disease' and assigns each a numbered sense. vyadhi gets sense 1; roga gets sense 8 ('Disorder, ailment'). The bundling follows Cha.Ni.1/5.
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.
Types of disease
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.2.3, vyādhibhedaḥ (व्याधिभेदः): 'The categorization of diseases based on various established criteria.' · standard
One of several places WHO uses vyādhi rather than roga as the compounding element.
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.
Comorbidity
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Ayurveda (2022) · ITA-4.2.2, vyādhisaṅkaraḥ (व्याधिसङ्करः): 'A disease that gives rise to another disease while continuing to exist; it may also signify two or more diseases which coexist owing to a similarity of etiology or pathogenic mechanism.' · standard
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 words 'Vyadhi', 'amaya', 'gada', 'atanka', 'yakshman', 'jwara', 'vikara', and 'roga', are of the same import.
Charaka Samhita, trans. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna · Nidana Sthana ch. 1 (= Ni.1/5 modern) · translation (public domain)
Kaviratna leaves the terms untranslated and asserts synonymy, which is what the Sanskrit says (anarthāntaram).
'Vyadhi' comes from the root 'vyadh', to beat or belabour. Disease, owing to the pain it causes, is regarded as 'beating' or 'belabouring' the person who is afflicted by it.
Charaka Samhita, trans. Avinash Chandra Kaviratna · translator's footnote to Nidana Sthana ch. 1 · translation (public domain)
Kaviratna's etymological note. The apostrophe before 'Disease' in the scan reads as a stray mark; otherwise verbatim.
anything that afflicts either the body or the living personality—self, or both, is called disease
Sushruta Samhita, trans. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna · Sutrasthana ch. XXIV (Vyadhi-Samuddheshiya), opening, back-reference to Su.Su.1 · translation (public domain)
Bhishagratna's compressed definition. Chapter XXIV is the chapter literally named for vyadhi.
The Purusha (man) is the receptacle of any. particular disease, and that which proves a source of torment or pain to him, is denominated as a disease.
Sushruta Samhita, trans. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna · Sutrasthana ch. I, heading 'Disease:—its Definition' · translation (public domain)
Quoted exactly as retrieved, including the stray full stop after 'any.' which is an OCR/typesetting artifact on the retrieved page, not an editorial change.
disease; disorder; morbidity
common BAMS/textbook rendering · textbook usage · our paraphrase of the source, not its words
'Disease' is near-universal; 'disorder' is used where a non-pathological reading is wanted.
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|| / tatra vyādhirāmayō gada ātaṅkō yakṣmā jvarō vikārō rōga ityanarthāntaram||5||
THE central verse for this record and for roga. Charaka declares vyadhi, amaya, gada, atanka, yakshma, jvara, vikara and roga to be anarthantaram, not different in meaning. Any lexicon that distinguishes vyadhi from roga must do so against this verse, not in ignorance of it.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 1:23 · checked against the source
तद्दुःखसंयोगा व्याधय उच्यन्ते ||२३||
Sushruta's definition: that which is a duhkha-samyoga (association with suffering) for the purusha is called vyadhi. A suffering-based, patient-centred definition rather than a lesion-based one.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 1 · checked against the source
The Purusha (man) is the receptacle of any. particular disease, and that which proves a source of torment or pain to him, is denominated as a disease.
Quotable English for Su.Su.1/23. Verse numbers are not printed on this page.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 24 · checked against the source
It has been stated before that anything that afflicts either the body or the living personality—self, or both, is called disease. This pain or affliction may be either physical in its character (Adhyat-mika), or due to any disturbance in the physical environments of a man (adhibhautika), or to the acts of God (adhidaivika) etc. This three-fold pain may be ultimately transformed into any of the seven kinds of diseases such as, the adi-vala-pravritta, Janma-vala-pravritta, Dosha-vala-pravritta, Sanghata-vala-pravritta, Kala-vala-pravritta, Daiva-vala-pravritta and Svabhava-vala-pravritta.
The Vyadhi-Samuddheshiya chapter's definition plus the tapa-traya and the seven-fold bala-pravritta classification. This is the source of most of WHO ISTA's section 4.2 disease-class entries (ITA-4.2.11 to 4.2.36). Verse numbers are not printed on the retrieved page.
Sushruta SamhitaSutrasthana 24 · checked against the source
The deranged bodily humours such as, Vayu, Pitta and Kapha should be looked upon as the primary sources of all diseases, inasmuch as symptoms characteristic of each of them may be detected in the case of a disease of whatsoever type, (which usually abates with their corresponding subsidence), and also because the Shastras have ascribed to them the fatherhood of all maladies that assail the human frame.
Sushruta subordinates every classification of vyadhi to the doshas, including the agantu and svabhavika classes. Relevant to any claim that agantu diseases lie outside dosha theory.
Charaka SamhitaSutrasthana 1:55 · checked against the source
शरीरं सत्त्वसञ्ज्ञं च व्याधीनामाश्रयो मतः| तथा सुखानां, योगस्तु सुखानां कारणं समः||५५||
The two ashrayas of vyadhi. Note the verse uses vyādhi, not roga, for the general term.
Not to be confused with
- roga
- Declared anarthantaram (not different in meaning) at Cha.Ni.1/5. Any distinction drawn between them is post-classical usage, not textual. See the roga record for the one asymmetry that is observable: which term each source prefers as a compounding element.
- vikara
- Also on the Cha.Ni.1/5 synonym list, but vikara has a second life as the general term for 'modification/change' in dravyaguna and in the dhatu-vaishamya definition of disease, so it is not safely interchangeable outside a nidana context.
- dosha
- Kaviratna's Charaka Vimana 6 passage (see the roga record) states explicitly that the same word roga is applied both to the faults (dosha) and to the disorders, which means the vyadhi/dosha boundary is not as clean in the text as textbooks present it.
- vyadhi-kshamatva
- WHO ISTA ITA entries use vyādhikṣamatvam for resistance/immunity. A string search for 'vyadhi' in any index will surface it; it is about the host's capacity, not about disease.
- vrana
- 'Ulcer/wound'. Sushruta Su.21 ends by deriving vrana from the root vri, and Su.24 divides all disease into surgical and medical. Vrana is a disease kind, not a synonym for disease.
Renderings that do not hold
- syndrome. Appears in WHO ISTA's own ITA-4.2.1 gloss list as one of the nine senses, but as the gloss for yakṣmā/samuccaya, not for vyādhi. Lifting 'syndrome' onto vyadhi misreads the numbered senses.
- pathology. Confuses the condition with the study or mechanism of it. The mechanism word is samprapti.
- lesion. Imports a structural requirement. Sushruta's definition at Su.Su.1/23 is duhkha-samyoga, association with suffering, which is explicitly experiential.
- imbalance. A wellness-industry softening. Dhatu-vaishamya is a cause of vyadhi in Charaka's frame, not a translation of it, and 'imbalance' erases the suffering criterion that both samhitas make definitional.
Open questions
Recorded rather than resolved. Each one is something this entry cannot currently settle.
- What are the printed verse numbers for the Bhishagratna Sushruta Sutrasthana chapter XXIV passages? The retrieved page carries no verse numbers at all, only footnote markers.
- Does any samhita passage distinguish vyadhi from roga in extension, as against Cha.Ni.1/5's declaration of synonymy? Nothing retrieved suggests one, but the commentators are unchecked.
How to cite this entry
Age Ayurveda Nighantu, vyādhi
, https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/lexicon/vyadhi/, 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.