How Haritaki Was Born: A Drop of Indra’s Amrit and Its Five Tastes in the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu

इस लेख को हिंदी में पढ़ें: हरीतकी का जन्म कैसे हुआ: इंद्र के अमृत की बूँद और उसके पाँच रस

📖 18 min read · Bhavaprakasha of Bhavamishra: Bhavaprakasha Nighantu, Haritakyadi varga 1-35, and Purva Khanda, prakarana 1 (Sanskrit, Wikisource); Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana 26.9

How Haritaki Was Born: One Drop of Amrit, One Fruit, Five Tastes

Our reel opens with one line: Indra was drinking amrit, a drop fell on the earth, and a fruit grew. The line is not ours. It is verse 5 of the first chapter of the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu, the part of Bhavamishra’s Bhavaprakasha that describes plants and other substances one at a time. The fruit is Haritaki, the yellow myrobalan (Terminalia chebula), which most of us know in Hindi as harad.

The story holds a small puzzle. A fruit born from the drink of the gods sounds as if it should have one taste, the taste of nectar. The same chapter says otherwise: Haritaki has five tastes, every taste except salty, and astringent above all (verse 19). Then it goes further and says where in the fruit each of the five sits (verse 27). The sweet one is tucked into the inner part; the stone keeps the astringent.

The story comes as an answer. Two physicians of heaven ask their teacher a list of questions, and he answers them in order: where the fruit was born, how many kinds it has, how many tastes, how many names. We retell it in that order from the Sanskrit on Wikisource, quoting each verse with a plain English gloss and adding nothing the text does not say. The book’s list of uses stays in the book; this page is about the story, the names, the kinds and the tastes.

One plain line first: this is a story from an old book, not advice. Talk to a qualified Ayurveda practitioner or doctor before taking any herb, Haritaki included.

Svarvaidya: Who the Ashvins Are (Purva Khanda 1.6-8 and 1.14)

The two who ask are the Ashvins, the pair of gods known in Hindi as the Ashvini Kumaras. The Bhavaprakasha calls them svarvaidyau, “the two physicians of heaven”, and the first chapter of its Purva Khanda tells how Ayurveda reached them. Brahma first set Ayurveda out in a samhita (compendium) of his own (1.5). Then:

ततः प्रजापतिं दक्षं दक्षं सकलकर्मसु ।
विधिर्धीनीरधिः साङ्गमायुर्वेदमुपादिशत् ॥६॥
अथ दक्षः क्रियादक्षः स्वर्वैद्यौ वेदमायुषः ।
वेदयामास विद्वांसौ सूर्यांशौ सुरसत्तमौ ॥७॥

“Then Vidhi (Brahma), an ocean of wisdom, taught Ayurveda with all its parts to Daksha Prajapati, who was skilled in every work. Then Daksha, skilled in action, made the knowledge of life known to the two physicians of heaven, the learned ones, portions of the Sun (sūryāṁśau), the best of the gods” (Purva Khanda 1.6-7). The verse plays on the name: Daksha is dakṣaṁ sakalakarmasu, “skilled in all work”.

Verse 8 adds that, having learned from Daksha, the two Dasras (another name for the Ashvins) composed a samhita of their own, for the growth of understanding among all the world’s physicians. The next five verses (1.9-13) list their deeds, and verse 14 sums them up:

etaiś cānyaiś ca bahubhiḥ karmabhir bhiṣajāṁ varau / babhūvatur bhṛśaṁ pūjyāv indrādīnāṁ divaukasām

“By these and many other deeds, the two best of physicians (bhiṣajāṁ varau) were greatly honoured by Indra and the other dwellers of heaven” (1.14).

So when the Haritaki chapter opens with the Ashvins asking Daksha a question, the book puts its own line of teachers on stage: the two best physicians of heaven, asking the teacher who taught them. That whole line, from Brahma down to the sages on earth, is told on our page about how Ayurveda came down in the Bhavaprakasha. Here we stay with one conversation about one fruit.

Kuto Haritaki Jata: The Ashvins Ask Daksha (Haritakyadi Varga 1-4)

The Haritaki chapter opens on that scene. Its first four verses are the questions (Bhavaprakasha Nighantu, Haritakyadi varga 1-4):

दक्षं प्रजापतिं स्वस्थमश्विनौ वाक्यमूचतुः ।
कुतो हरीतकी जाता तस्यास्तु कति जातयः ॥१॥
रसाः कति समाख्याताः कति चोपरसाः स्मृताः ।
नामानि कति चोक्तानि किं वा तासां च लक्षणम् ॥२॥
के च वर्णा गुणाः के च का च कुत्र प्रयुज्यते ।
केन द्रव्येण संयुक्ता कांश्च रोगान्व्यपोहति ॥३॥
प्रश्नमेतद्यथा पृष्टं भगवन्वक्तुमर्हसि ।
अश्विनोर्वचनं श्रुत्वा दक्षो वचनमब्रवीत् ॥४॥

In plain English:

1. Verse 1. The two Ashvins spoke to Daksha Prajapati, who sat at ease (svastham): “Where was Haritaki born (kuto harītakī jātā)? How many kinds (jātayaḥ) does it have?
2. Verse 2. How many tastes (rasāḥ) are named, and how many secondary tastes (uparasa)? How many names (nāmāni) are told, and what are their marks (lakṣaṇam)?
3. Verse 3. What are their colours, and their qualities (guṇāḥ)? Which one is used where? Joined with which substance (dravyeṇa), and against which illnesses (rogān)?
4. Verse 4. Lord, you should answer this question just as it has been asked.” Hearing the Ashvins’ words, Daksha spoke.

Three things are worth noticing. Daksha is svastham, at ease (the word also means “well”): a teacher with time to answer. The questions read almost like a form to fill in: birth, kinds, tastes, names, marks, colours, qualities, uses. And verse 4 asks him to answer “just as it has been asked”, which is what the chapter then does, in order. That makes the questions a map of the whole section; we lay the map out under What Ayurveda learns from it.

An empty seat, a closed manuscript, a lamp: Daksha sits at ease when the Ashvins ask (verses 1-4).

Bindu: The Drop of Indra’s Amrit (Haritakyadi Varga 5)

Daksha begins with the birth, and he needs only two lines (Haritakyadi varga 5):

पपात बिन्दुर्मेदिन्यां शक्रस्य पिबतोऽमृतम् ।
ततो दिव्यात्समुत्पन्ना सप्तजातिर्हरीतकी ॥५॥

papāta bindur medinyāṁ śakrasya pibato ’mṛtam / tato divyāt samutpannā saptajātir harītakī

Word by word:

• papāta: fell.
• bindur: a drop (bindu).
• medinyāṁ: on the earth.
• śakrasya pibato ’mṛtam: of Shakra, as he was drinking amrit. Shakra, “the mighty”, is one of Indra’s names.
• tato divyāt: from that divine (drop).
• samutpannā: arose, came into being.
• saptajātir harītakī: Haritaki, of seven kinds.

Put together: as Shakra was drinking amrit, a drop fell on the earth, and from that divine drop arose Haritaki, in seven kinds.

That is the whole of the birth. The text gives no place, no time and no reason. It does not say where the drop landed, what Indra did next or how long the fruit took to grow, and it names no cup or vessel. What it does give is a neat answer to the question as it was put. The Ashvins asked kuto, “from where?”; Daksha answers tato divyāt, “from that divine one”: two words of the same shape, a question and its echo. The seven kinds are already in the answer (saptajātir), and the rest of Daksha’s reply explains them.

Our reel closes its story on the mirror of its first line: Indra’s share was the amrit, and the earth’s share was one drop of it. That is verse 5, seen from below.

From that divine drop arose Haritaki (verse 5). The text names no place where the drop fell.

Nama: Fifteen Names, From Abhaya to Rohini (Verses 6-7)

Next come the names (nāmāni), fifteen of them in a verse and a half (6-7):

हरीतक्यभया पथ्या कायस्था पूतनाऽमृता ।
हैमवत्यव्यथा चापि चेतकी श्रेयसी शिवा ॥६॥
वयस्था विजया चापि जीवन्ती रोहिणीति च ॥७॥

In the order the text gives them: Haritaki, Abhaya, Pathya, Kayastha, Putana, Amrita, Haimavati, Avyatha, Chetaki, Shreyasi, Shiva, Vayastha, Vijaya, Jivanti and Rohini.

The Nighantu explains none of them. Six are plain enough to read at a glance, and for those we give only the literal sense:

• Abhaya: without fear (a-bhaya).
• Amrita: nectar, the drink of the gods.
• Haimavati: of the Himalaya (Himavat).
• Shreyasi: the excellent one.
• Shiva: auspicious.
• Vijaya: victorious.

The other nine we leave as the text gives them. The Nighantu offers no reason for any of these names, so we offer none either, and none of the fifteen is a statement of what the fruit does.

Amrita is the name to stop at. In verse 5 the fruit was born from a drop of amrit; in verse 6, one of its names is Amrita, the same word. The text does not say that this is why it carries the name. It simply lists it, sixth of fifteen, and leaves the reader to notice.

Two more things about the names. Seven of the fifteen (Vijaya, Rohini, Putana, Amrita, Abhaya, Jivanti and Chetaki) come back in the very next verse as the names of the seven kinds. And the text uses its own names freely as it goes: verse 8 speaks of “the seven kinds of Pathya”, verse 27, the verse of the tastes, speaks of Pathya, verses 23-24 call it Shiva, and the caution at the end of the section (verse 35) says Abhaya. All of them are the one fruit.

Haimavati, one of the fifteen names, means “of the Himalaya”.

Sapta Jati: Seven Kinds, Told Apart by Shape (Verses 8-10 and 18)

Daksha has said “seven kinds”. Now he names them (verse 8) and tells the Ashvins how to know each one by its look (verses 9-10):

विजया रोहिणी चैव पूतना चामृताऽभया ।
जीवन्ती चेतकी चेति पथ्यायाः सप्तजातयः ॥८॥
अलाबुवृत्ता विजया वृत्ता सा रोहिणी स्मृता ।
पूतनाऽस्थिमती सूक्ष्मा कथिता मांसलाऽमृताः ॥९॥
पञ्चरेखाऽभया प्रोक्ता जीवन्ती स्वर्णवर्णिनी ।
त्रिरेखा चेतकी ज्ञेया सप्तानामियमाकृतिः ॥१०॥

The verse closes with saptānām iyam ākṛtiḥ, “this is the shape of the seven”. Two of the marks are lines on the fruit (five for Abhaya, three for Chetaki), one is a colour (Jivanti, golden), and the rest are form and size. The text gives no drawing and no measurement: these few words are all it offers.

When it comes to colours (verse 13), the text adds that Chetaki itself is of two kinds by colour, white and black (śvetā kṛṣṇā ca). And of all seven it names a chief (verse 18):

सप्तानामपि जातीनां प्रधाना विजया स्मृता ।

“Of the seven kinds, Vijaya is remembered as the chief (pradhānā).” The verse then calls it sulabhā, easy to find, before it turns to uses, which we leave in the book. Vijaya, “victorious”, is the first kind named in verse 8 and the chief in verse 18.

Seven groups of fruit: the text tells its seven kinds apart by shape, lines and colour (verses 9-10).

Taste (Rasa): Five Tastes, Each in a Different Part of the Fruit (Verses 19 and 27)

Here is the part our reel promised. The Ashvins asked how many tastes (rasāḥ) Haritaki has. Ayurveda counts six tastes in all. In the Charaka Samhita the sage Atreya Punarvasu says there are only six: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent (Sutrasthana 26.9):

षडेव रसा इत्युवाच भगवानात्रेयः पुनर्वसुः मधुराम्ललवणकटुतिक्तकषायाः ।

The Bhavaprakasha Nighantu gives Haritaki five of the six (verse 19):

हरीतकी पञ्चरसाऽलवणातुवरा परम् ।

• harītakī: Haritaki.
• pañcarasā: has five tastes (pancha, five; rasa, taste).
• ’lavaṇā: without salt. The mark ’ stands for a dropped letter a: a-lavana, “not salty”.
• tuvarā param: astringent above all.

So Haritaki has five tastes, lacks only the salty one, and is astringent first of all. The Nighantu’s word for astringent is tuvara where Charaka says kashaya, and its word for sweet, in verse 27, is svadu where Charaka says madhura: the same tastes under different names.

Eight verses later the text does what our reel promised. It says where in the fruit each of the five tastes sits (Haritakyadi varga 27):

पथ्याया मज्जनि स्वादुः स्नाय्वामम्लो व्यवस्थितः ।
वृन्ते तिक्तस्त्वचि कटुरस्थिस्थस्तुवरो रसः ॥२७॥

pathyāyā majjani svāduḥ snāyvām amlo vyavasthitaḥ / vṛnte tiktas tvaci kaṭur asthisthas tuvaro rasaḥ

Word by word:

• pathyāyāḥ: of Pathya, that is, of Haritaki (Pathya is one of its fifteen names).
• majjani: in the majja, the inner part. Majja is the word for marrow and is used for the pith of plants too (Monier-Williams); here it is the soft inside of the fruit.
• svāduḥ: sweet.
• snāyvām: in the snayu, the fibres. Snayu is the word for sinew; in a fruit, its stringy fibres.
• amlo: sour.
• vyavasthitaḥ: is placed, sits.
• vṛnte: in the vrinta, the stalk that holds the fruit.
• tiktas: bitter.
• tvaci: in the tvak, the rind. Tvak means skin, bark or rind.
• kaṭur: pungent.
• asthisthas: sitting in the asthi, the stone. Asthi means bone, and also the kernel of a fruit (Monier-Williams); here, its stone.
• tuvaro rasaḥ: the astringent taste.

Put together: in Pathya, the sweet taste sits in the inner part, the sour in the fibres, the bitter in the stalk, the pungent in the rind, and the astringent taste in the stone. As a table:

Two things stand out. First, the text agrees with itself. Verse 19 says five tastes, and verse 27 places exactly five, one in each part; salty, the taste verse 19 leaves out, has no place in verse 27 either. Second, the words for the parts are body words. Majja, snayu, tvak and asthi are also the everyday words for marrow, sinew, skin and bone (Monier-Williams); only vrinta, the stalk, is a plant word. The verse reads the fruit almost like a body. It draws no lesson from that and attaches nothing to any taste: it only says where each one is.

What of the secondary tastes (uparasa) the Ashvins also asked about? Verse 19 answers half of that question: it names five tastes and puts one of them, astringent, “above all” (param), which shows which taste leads. The word uparasa itself does not come back anywhere in these thirty-five verses.

Rind, flesh with its fibres, stone and stalk: verse 27 gives each part its own taste.

Prashasta: The Marks of the Best Fruit (Verses 28-29)

Right after the tastes, Daksha tells the Ashvins how to know the best fruit (verse 28):

नवा स्निग्धा घना वृत्ता गुर्वी क्षिप्ता च याऽम्भसि ।
निमज्जेत्सा प्रशस्ता च कथिताऽतिगुणप्रदा ॥२८॥

“The fruit that is new (navā), smooth (snigdhā), dense (ghanā), round (vṛttā) and heavy (gurvī), and that sinks (nimajjet) when it is thrown into water (kṣiptā ca yā ’mbhasi), is called the praised one (praśastā) and is said to give its qualities in full.”

Verse 29 adds a measure:

नवादिगुणयुक्तत्वं तथैवात्र द्विकर्षता ।
हरीतक्याः फले यत्र द्वयं तच्छ्रेष्ठमुच्यते ॥२९॥

“Where a Haritaki fruit has both, the qualities that begin with ‘new’ and weighing two karsha (dvikarṣatā), that fruit is called the best.” A karsha is a unit of the old Indian measures; the Monier-Williams dictionary gives it as a quarter of a pala.

The sinking test sits well with the rest of the list, which has already asked for a dense (ghanā) and heavy (gurvī) fruit. This is the text’s description of a good fruit, as Daksha gives it to the Ashvins. It is not a buying guide.

Thrown into water, the best fruit sinks: one of the marks the text gives (verse 28).

Abhayam Na Khadet: Who Should Not Take It (Verse 35)

From verse 11 the Bhavaprakasha answers the Ashvins’ last questions, which kind is used where and with what, with a long list of uses and illnesses (verses 11-17 and 20-34), and we leave that list in the book along with its doses and methods. The section closes with a caution of its own, and that we do quote (verse 35):

अध्वातिखिन्नो बलवर्जितश्च रूक्षः कृशो लङ्घनकर्शितश्च ।
पित्ताधिको गर्भवती च नारी विमुक्तरक्तस्त्वभयां न खादेत् ॥३५॥

“One worn out by travel (adhvātikhinno), one without strength (balavarjitaś), one who is dry (rūkṣaḥ) or lean (kṛśo), one thinned by fasting (laṅghanakarśitaś), one with too much pitta (pittādhiko), a pregnant woman (garbhavatī nārī), and one who has just had blood let (vimuktaraktas) should not eat Abhaya (abhayāṁ na khādet).”

Note the name the caution uses: Abhaya, “without fear”, for the very fruit it tells these people not to eat. A name is a name, not a promise.

What Ayurveda Learns From It: How a Nighantu Describes a Plant

A nighantu is a word-list: a book, or part of a book, that names plants and other substances one by one and says what each is like. Bhavamishra’s Nighantu opens with Haritaki (its first chapter is named after it, Haritakyadi varga, “the group that begins with Haritaki”), and it opens Haritaki with a story. Read closely, the story is also a method. The Ashvins’ questions are the outline of the section, and Daksha answers them in order:

Daksha also gives something the Ashvins did not ask for in so many words: how to know the best fruit (verses 28-29). And the section ends where a careful answer should, with the people who should not take it (verse 35).

So the Bhavaprakasha shows, by example, what it takes to know a plant: its names (nama), its kinds and their shapes (akriti), its colours (varna), its tastes (rasa) and where they sit, the marks of a good fruit, and only then its uses, with a caution at the end. In our reading, that is a lesson about knowing a plant before using it. A fruit described this closely is hard to mistake for another, and a reader who knows its fifteen names will recognise it when a later verse calls it Abhaya, Pathya or Shiva.

The opening adds one more lesson, about who asks. The book calls the Ashvins the best of physicians (Purva Khanda 1.14), yet here they put the most basic questions to their own teacher: where does it come from, what is it called, what does it look like? In the Bhavaprakasha, even the physicians of heaven begin a plant with its name and its shape.

Where This Story Comes From: Bhavamishra’s Bhavaprakasha

The Bhavaprakasha was written by Bhavamishra in the 16th century. Both of the story’s passages come from its first part, the Purva Khanda: the opening chapter (prakarana 1), which traces Ayurveda down from Brahma, and the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu, the book’s list of substances, placed in the Purva Khanda’s Mishra prakarana. The Nighantu’s first chapter is the Haritakyadi varga, and the Haritaki section fills its first thirty-five verses. That is how Haritaki was born in the book’s telling: at the head of its list of substances, answering two physicians of heaven.

The drop of amrit is the text’s own origin story, told as a story. The same Nighantu uses the image more than once: garlic (Haritakyadi varga 218) and the Guduchi vine (Guduchyadi varga 5) are also born where amrit fell, stories for another day.

Read it yourself. The Sanskrit is free on Sanskrit Wikisource (sa.wikisource.org), in the public domain. The Nighantu is on the page भावप्रकाशः/पूर्वखण्डे भावप्रकाशनिघण्टुः (we used revision 321662; the Haritaki section is its first thirty-five verses), and the first chapter is on the page भावप्रकाशसंहिता/पूर्वखण्डः/प्रथमः भागः/प्रकरणम् १ (revision 210381; verses 5-14). Search Wikisource for those titles. Wikisource numbers verses 10, 20 and 30 of the Nighantu as 2.10, 2.20 and 2.30; we use the plain numbers. It also prints the last word of verse 9 with a final visarga (’mṛtāḥ), a plural, though the verse means the one kind, Amrita; we quote it as printed.

The English glosses on this page are our own, word by word, checked against the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), which you can search free online through the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries. No translator’s English is quoted, so every reading here can be checked against the Sanskrit printed above it.

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