# Karṇa-bali > Karṇa-bali appears in the source record as a brief cautery applied to points on the ear. The record gives a single line, no materials and no indications, and the classical citation it offers does not check out. It is marked vaidya-only. Read this page as a flag on a thin record. ## Key facts - **Sanskrit name:** Karṇa-bali ## What the record says The source record gives one procedural line: specific marma points on the ear are cauterised briefly. It glosses the English name as "ear tip / pre-auricular cautery" and files it as kriyā-bāhya, an external procedure. Every other field is empty. There are no materials, no instruments, no dravyas, no oils, no duration, no frequency, no season, no indications, no contraindications and no adverse-event data. ## The classical citation does not hold up The record cites Suśruta Sūtrasthāna 12. That chapter is real and is the Agnikarma-vidhi Adhyāya, Suśruta's chapter on thermal cautery. Read against two independent translations, it does not support this record. The chapter never mentions the ear. The only anatomical region it names for cautery in diseases of the head is the area of the eyebrows, forehead and temples. It sets out four modes of cautery (ring, dot, lateral lines and rubbing) and the materials for each tissue depth: long pepper, goat dung, cow tooth, arrowheads and metal rods for skin; the jāmbavauṣṭha instrument and copper or silver appliances for flesh; honey, jaggery and boiled oils and fats for vessels, ligaments, joints and bone. And rather than directing cautery at marma, the chapter tells the physician to take the vital spots into account before performing agnikarma. It also carries a broad contraindication list: people of pitta constitution, those with accumulated blood in the abdomen or bleeding disorders, those with a ruptured abdomen or diarrhoea, those in whom a foreign body has not been removed, the debilitated, children, the aged, the fearful, those with multiple wounds or ulcers, and those unfit for sudation. Separately, the material in Suśruta that concerns the ear lobule (karṇapālī) is in Sūtrasthāna 16, Karṇavyadha-bandha-vidhi, which covers piercing an infant's lobule and the fifteen methods of repairing a torn one. That chapter is about piercing and reconstruction, not cautery, so it is not the missing citation either. No classical basis could be confirmed in this session for briefly cauterising marma points on the ear. ## Why this needs a vaidya, and why the record is not enough Cautery is a controlled burn. The record proposes it at marma points on the ear, a small, densely innervated and cartilaginous structure, and the classical chapter it cites specifically asks the physician to weigh the vital spots before cauterising anything. The record supplies no instrument, no temperature, no contact time and no indication, so there is nothing here that constitutes a procedure at all, let alone one a reader could evaluate. If a practitioner offers this, the reasonable thing is to ask which text they are working from and to see it, because the citation on this record is not it. --- Canonical version of this page: https://nighantu.ageayurveda.com/practice/karna-bali/ Published by Age Ayurveda in the Nighantu. Educational reference only, not medical advice. Incorporates material from the Amidha Ayurveda Herb Database under CC BY 4.0.