Trikatu, Pancakola and the Five Pancamulas: Vagbhata's Herb Groups in Ashtanga Hridaya Sutrasthana 6

📖 24 min read · Classical source: Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana, chapter 6 (Annasvarupa Vijnaniya Adhyaya), verses 46–71 · pages 161–168 of the Vidyanath R. / Chowkhamba English edition

There is a moment in the sixth chapter of the Ashtanga Hridaya where the writing changes character, and if you are reading straight through it is easy to miss.

For pages, Vagbhata has been working through food. Grains, then pulses, then meats, then vegetables, then fruits — each one weighed up, each one given its qualities. It reads like a catalogue, because that is what it is. Then, somewhere around the salts, the catalogue stops being about dinner. The entries get shorter and sharper. And then, quite suddenly, Vagbhata stops naming things one at a time and starts naming them in groups.

Sutrasthana 6 of the Ashtanga Hridaya: the chapter where Vagbhata's food catalogue turns into a list of named herb groups.

Three fruits, and he calls them Triphala — literally "three fruits". Three aromatics, and they are Trijataka. Three pungents, Trikatu. Five pungents, Pancakola. Then five roots, and five more roots, and five more, until there are five separate groups of five and the chapter has handed you twenty-five plants in five bundles.

This is one of the most practical habits in classical Ayurvedic writing, and it is worth understanding before you read another line of any Samhita. If you have ever wondered why an Ayurvedic formula ingredient list says "Dashamula" instead of listing ten roots, or why a churna is described as containing "Trikatu" rather than three separate spices, the answer is in this half of this chapter. This article walks through it in order, in plain English, with the properties the text actually assigns.

If you want the first half of the same chapter — the grains, the pulses, the meats — we have covered that separately in our guide to Annasvarupa Vijnaniya and Vagbhata's food classification. This one picks up where that leaves off.

Annasvarupa Vijnaniya: Where the Food Chapter Turns Into a Pharmacy

The chapter's name tells you its job. Anna is food. Svarupa is nature or intrinsic form. Vijnaniya means "to be known" or "for the understanding of". Put together: the chapter for understanding the nature of foods. It is the sixth chapter of the Sutrasthana, the first and most foundational of the six sections of the Ashtanga Hridaya.

Vagbhata organises it by varga — group or class. Shuka Dhanya Varga for the awned grains, Shami Dhanya Varga for the pulses, Mamsa Varga for meats, Shaka Varga for vegetables, Phala Varga for fruits. Each varga is a shelf, and each shelf holds entries.

What happens in the second half of the chapter is that the shelves run out of food and start holding pharmacy. The Lavana Varga — the salts — is a hinge. Salt is unambiguously food. It is also, in the classical view, a substance with a strong and specific action, which is why the text describes each salt separately rather than treating "salt" as one thing. Immediately after the salts come the ksaras, the alkaline preparations, which nobody would call food at all. After the ksaras, hingu. After hingu, Triphala. And from there to the end of our pages, it is groups all the way down.

This is also why the chapter is quietly important for anyone learning to read Ayurvedic formulas. Almost every classical churna, kwatha or leha you will ever meet draws its ingredients from these same lists. Learn the lists and the formulas stop being arbitrary.

Lavana Varga: The Salts, and Why Saindhava Is the Default

Our pages open in the middle of the salt list, and the first thing to notice is how many salts there are. Not one. Vagbhata names and separates at least eight.

Sauvarcala lavana — the black salt of the modern Indian kitchen, kala namak — is given laghu guna (light quality) and katu vipaka (pungent post-digestive effect). The text calls it delightful and aromatic, and lists it in connection with belching, with vibandha (the classical term for hard, held stool), and with the sharpening of taste perception.

Vida lavana gets an unusual description in Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 46: it is said to work on both the upward and the downward movement of kapha and vata. It appears in the chapter's lists for anaha (distension with obstruction), vistambha (blocked, held-up feeling), shula (colicky pain) and gaurava (heaviness).

Samudra lavana — sea salt, the ordinary one — is marked guru guna (heavy), madhura vipaka (sweet post-digestive effect), and is said to increase kapha (verse 47). This is a small but telling entry. The most common salt in the world is given the least flattering classical profile in the list.

Oudbhida lavana, an earth-derived salt, carries tikta (bitter), katu (pungent) and ksara (alkaline) rasa with tiksna guna (piercing quality), and is described as increasing secretions in the body. Romaka lavana is laghu, light. Pamsuka lavana is slightly ksara in taste, guru in quality, and increases kapha.

The Lavana Varga: Vagbhata separates at least eight salts, and names one of them the default for formulation work.

Then comes the line that makes the whole list useful. Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 49 states that Saindhava lavana — rock salt, sendha namak — is to be preferred whenever salt is used in a formulation.

That is a default setting written into a classical text. Vagbhata has just spent several verses distinguishing eight salts by taste, quality and effect, and then closes the list by telling the reader which one to reach for when the recipe simply says "salt". It is the kind of instruction that only appears in a text written by people who actually made things.

Ksara and Yavakshara: A Class That Carries Its Own Warning

Immediately after the salts, Vagbhata turns to the ksaras — alkaline substances, classically prepared by burning plant material, steeping the ash in water and filtering off the clear liquid.

Yavakshara, made from barley plant ash, is named first. Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 50 lists it in connection with gulma (abdominal lump or mass), hridroga (the classical heart disorder), grahani (the classical disorder of the digestive channel), pandu (the classical pallor disorder), pliha (spleen disorder), anaha, galaroga (throat disorder), shwasa (the classical breathing disorder) and kaphaja kasa (cough of kapha type).

Then verse 51 gives the general properties of ksaras as a class, and this is where the chapter does something you rarely see in a herbal catalogue. All ksaras, Vagbhata says, are broadly katu and lavana in rasa, tiksna and laghu in guna, and ushna in virya. They are described as acting against krimi (worms), as vitiating pitta and rakta, as digesting other substances, and as being able to excise hard masses and puncture tissue.

And then, in the same breath, the text adds the counterweight: ksaras are not good for the heart, for shukra, for ojas, for the hair or for the eyes.

It also explains something about classical formulation practice: ksaras appear in relatively few daily-use preparations and many short-course ones. A substance described as unfriendly to ojas and to the eyes is not one the tradition intended anyone to take casually or indefinitely.

Hingu: The Resin That Sits Between Kitchen and Pharmacy

Next comes Hingu — asafoetida, hing, Ferula foetida — and it is the single best example in the chapter of an item that never resolved into either category.

Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 52 gives it katu rasa (pungent taste), laghu guna (light quality) and katu vipaka (pungent post-digestive effect). The text marks it as vata-kapha-hara; it is listed in connection with anaha and shula; it is said to increase pitta; and it is credited with sharpening taste perception and with the classical categories of deepana and pachana.

Those last two words are worth learning properly, because they run through the whole second half of this chapter.

Hingu is also the point at which a reader raised in an Indian kitchen usually stops and looks up. A pinch of hing in the tempering of a dal is not an unusual gesture from a pharmacy. It is Tuesday. And yet here it is, in a classical medical text, with a formal profile and a formal set of indications, sitting between the alkalis and the Triphala. The chapter simply does not accept the distinction we make between a spice rack and a dispensary.

Triphala in the Ashtanga Hridaya: Haritaki, Amalaki, Vibhitaki

Verses 53 to 59 are the chapter's first true group, and it is the most famous one in Ayurveda: Triphala, the three fruits.

What is instructive here is the order in which Vagbhata does the work. He does not describe Triphala and then break it down. He describes the three fruits individually and in full, and only then tells you that together they are called Triphala and gives the properties of the combination. The group is built, not asserted.

Haritaki (Terminalia chebula)

The chapter gives Haritaki all six tastes except lavana (salty), with kashaya (astringent) predominant — an unusual profile that the tradition often cites as evidence of its breadth. Guna: ruksa (dry), laghu (light), sara (mobile). Virya: ushna (hot). Vipaka: madhura (sweet).

The text credits it with deepana and with acting on undigested food, with strengthening the mind and the sense organs, and — in a phrase that has attracted attention for centuries — with sharpening the intellect and lengthening the lifespan. Its classical indication list is long: skin disorders, discoloration, svarabheda (hoarseness), chronic and intermittent jwara (fever), disorders of the head and eyes, pandu, heart disorders, jaundice, emaciation, oedema, atisara (loose motions), prameha (the classical group of urinary disorders), fainting, vomiting, krimi, shwasa, kasa, salivation, arsha (the classical term for piles), pliha, abdominal distension, artificial poisoning, ascites, blocked channels, tumours, aruchi (loss of taste for food) and urustambha (stiffness of the thighs).

Amalaki (Emblica officinalis)

Amalaki — amla, the Indian gooseberry — is given five tastes, all but lavana, with amla (sour) predominant. Guna: guru (heavy), ruksa (dry), sita (cold). Virya: sita. Vipaka: madhura.

The chapter says it shares Haritaki's qualities broadly, and then makes a neat dosha argument: because it is madhura in rasa and sita in virya it works against pitta; because of its katu vipaka it works against kapha; and because of its amla rasa it works against vata. One fruit, all three doshas, by three different mechanisms. The text also calls it good for the throat, the eyes and the heart, and lists it against thirst and jwara.

Triphala: three fruits described separately in full, and only then named as a group.

Vibhitaki (Terminalia bellirica)

Vibhitaki is described plainly as somewhat inferior to Amalaki in its qualities — a candid ranking of the sort the classical texts are not shy about. Rasa: kashaya and madhura. Guna: laghu, ruksa. Virya: the text gives both sita and ushna. Vipaka: madhura.

It is listed against kasa, shwasa and throat disorders, marked as working against kapha and pitta, and its fruit pulp is described as supporting the growth of the body. There is also a specific note that used as a collyrium — an eye application — it was employed for corneal ulceration.

The three together

Only now does the chapter give the properties of Triphala as a unit. It calls the combination a very good Rasayana. It lists the group in connection with eye disorders and skin disorders, with vrana (the classical term for ulcers and wounds) and the drying of moisture in them, and with sthaulya (the classical term for excessive bulk), prameha, and kapha and rakta disorders.

Trijataka and Caturjataka: The Aromatic Three and Four

Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 60 introduces two groups in a single stroke, and the way it does so is the clearest illustration in the chapter of how classical group-naming actually works.

Trijataka — the "three aromatics" — is:

• Twak (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) — cinnamon bark, dalchini
• Patra (Cinnamomum tamala) — Indian bay leaf, tejpatta
• Ela (Elettaria cardamomum) — cardamom, elaichi

Add one more — Nagakesara (Mesua ferrea) — and the group becomes Caturjataka, the four aromatics.

Trijataka is three aromatics; add nagakesara and the same set becomes Caturjataka.

That is the whole mechanism. A named group is a fixed, ordered set, and a related group is often the same set plus or minus one member with its own name. Once you know this, a great deal of classical shorthand decodes itself.

Their shared properties: tiksna and ruksa guna, ushna virya, and they increase pitta. The text credits them with sharpening taste perception and with deepana.

You will find Trijataka and Caturjataka scattered through classical formulations as aromatic finishers, and you will find the same three in almost every Indian home. Cinnamon, bay leaf and cardamom are the backbone of a garam masala. Vagbhata is describing your masala dabba, with a pharmacological profile attached.

Trikatu: Sunthi, Marica and Pippali

Now the chapter reaches the group that most people have heard of even if they have never opened a Samhita.

Vagbhata builds it the same way he built Triphala — members first, group second.

Marica (Piper nigrum)

Black pepper, kali mirch. Rasa: katu. Guna: laghu. Virya: ushna. Vipaka: katu. It increases pitta and works against kapha. Four lines, and the profile is complete — the classical framework is compact enough that a whole substance fits in a breath.

Pippali (Piper longum)

Long pepper gets the most interesting entry in the group, because Vagbhata describes it twice (verses 61–62).

Unripened, tender, green pippali is madhura in rasa, guru and snigdha (heavy and unctuous) in guna, sita in virya and madhura in vipaka — and it increases kapha. Dried pippali, the text says, has exactly the opposite qualities: katu in rasa, snigdha in guna, madhura in vipaka. It is marked vrishya — the classical category concerning shukra dhatu — it works against vata and kapha, and it is listed in connection with kasa and shwasa.

The pippali entry also carries an explicit restriction: the text says pippali should not be used excessively except within Rasayana therapy. Another instance of the chapter's habit of writing the limit next to the property.

Sunthi (Zingiber officinale)

Dried ginger, sonth. Rasa: katu. Guna: laghu, snigdha. Virya: ushna. Vipaka: madhura — and that last one is the surprise. A pungent, hot substance with a sweet post-digestive effect is unusual, and the tradition reads that madhura vipaka as the reason sunthi is considered gentler and more broadly usable than its two group-mates.

The chapter credits it with appetite, marks it vrishya, describes it as absorbing water in the body, calls it good for the heart, lists it against vibandha, credits it with sharpening taste, and marks it against kapha and vata.

Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 64 then adds Ardraka — fresh ginger, adrak — noting it has qualities similar to sunthi, and in the same verse gives the group its name:

Trikatu: sunthi, marica and pippali — three pungents named as one unit in Sutrasthana 6, verse 64.

Three plants. Two of them from the same botanical genus, Piper. All three pungent, all three hot, all three in most Indian kitchens. Vagbhata bundles them, names the bundle, and from that point on any classical text can write "Trikatu" and every reader knows exactly what is meant and in what proportion the tradition takes it.

Trikatu also appears in the Ashtanga Hridaya's daily-routine material — it is among the powders Vagbhata names for danta dhavana, the classical tooth-cleaning procedure, which we have covered in detail in our guide to danta dhavana and the nine twigs. The same three-plant bundle turning up in the dinacharya chapter and the dravya chapter is exactly the payoff of group-naming.

Pancakola: The Five Pungent Roots

Between Trikatu and Pancakola the chapter slips in three more entries, and they are the connective tissue between the two groups.

Verse 65 gives Cavika (Piper chaba) and Pippalimula — the root of the long pepper plant — describing both as having properties somewhat lesser than those of marica. Then comes Citraka (Plumbago zeylanica), described as being similar in property to agni itself, in that it digests; the chapter lists it in connection with shopha (swelling), arsha, krimi and kushtha (the classical group of skin disorders).

And then Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 66 gathers five of them into a named set:

That superlative — best of its category — is the sort of ranking classical texts hand out sparingly, and it is why Pancakola turns up so often in classical formulations concerned with the digestive channel.

The construction is also worth noting for its own sake. Pancakola is not a fresh set of five plants. It is an existing group with one member swapped out and three added, including — elegantly — the root of a plant whose fruit is already in the set. Pippali and pippalimula are counted as two separate dravyas because the classical framework counts different parts of the same plant as genuinely different substances with different profiles.

The Five Pancamulas: Brhat, Laghu, Madhyama, Jivaniya, Trna

The last stretch of our pages is the chapter's most ambitious piece of grouping, and it is where the group-naming habit reaches full expression. Pancamula means "five roots". Vagbhata gives five different Pancamulas — five groups of five roots each, twenty-five plants, each group with its own name and its own profile.

1. Brhat Pancamula — the greater five roots

Given at Ashtanga Hridaya, Sutrasthana 6, verse 67. These are the five great trees:

• Bilwa / sriphala (Aegle marmelos) — bael
• Kasmari / gambhari (Gmelina arborea)
• Tarkari / agnimantha (Clerodendrum phlomidis)
• Patala / amogha (Stereospermum suaveolens)
• Tintuka / syonaka (Oroxylum indicum)

Profile: kashaya and tikta rasa, ushna virya, working against kapha and vata.

2. Laghu Pancamula — the lesser five roots

Five herbs and shrubs rather than trees:

• Brhati (Solanum indicum)
• Kantakari (Solanum xanthocarpum) — these two together are the Brhati dwaya, the "two brhatis"
• Shalaparni (Desmodium gangeticum)
• Prishniparni (Uraria picta) — these two are the Amsumati dwaya
• Gokshura (Tribulus terrestris)

Profile: madhura rasa and madhura vipaka, neither cold nor hot in potency, and — unusually — described as working against all three doshas.

Pancamula: five roots. Vagbhata gives five such groups in a row — twenty-five plants in five named bundles.

3. Madhyama Pancamula — the middle five

Given at verse 69:

• Bala (Sida cordifolia)
• Punarnava (Boerhavia diffusa)
• Eranda (Ricinus communis) — castor
• Mudgaparni (Phaseolus trilobus)
• Mashaparni (Phaseolus labialis) — these last two form the Surpaparni dwaya

Profile: sara guna (mobile), slightly increases pitta, works against vata and kapha.

4. Jivaniya Pancamula — the five life-giving roots

• Abhiru (Asparagus racemosus) — shatavari
• Vira (Vetiveria zizanioides)
• Jivanti (Leptadenia reticulata)
• Jivaka — one of the Ashtavarga
• Rishabhaka — also one of the Ashtavarga

Profile: described as good for the eyes, marked vrishya, and working against pitta and vata. The name comes from jiva, life.

5. Trna Pancamula — the five grass roots

Given at verse 71, and built from grasses and reeds — Darbha (Desmostachya bipinnata), Kasa (Saccharum spontaneum) and Ikshu (Saccharum officinarum, sugarcane) among them.

Gana or Pancamula? Why Jivaniya Gana Is Not Jivaniya Pancamula

This is the single most common point of confusion for anyone studying the classical dravya lists, and it is worth clearing up carefully, because the names overlap and the contents do not.

A gana is a group of drugs. So is a Pancamula. But they come from different books, they are built to different rules, and they are not interchangeable.

So Jivaniya gana and Jivaniya Pancamula share a name-word, share two members (Jivaka and Rishabhaka), and are still two different lists from two different texts of two different sizes. If a formula calls for one and you supply the other, you have supplied something else.

Names like mustadi gana, surasadi gana, padmakadi gana and vidaryadi gana follow a further convention worth knowing: the group takes its name from its first member plus -adi, meaning "and the rest". Mustadi is "musta and the others". It is a table of contents compressed into a single word.

How to Read a Dravya Entry: Rasa, Guna, Virya, Vipaka

Every entry in this half of the chapter is written to the same four-slot template, and once you can read the template you can read any dravya entry in any classical text.

The fourth slot is the one that repays attention. Vipaka is the classical framework's acknowledgement that a substance's immediate character and its eventual effect need not match — that dried ginger can be pungent in the mouth and sweet in its aftermath. It is a genuinely subtle idea, and it is why the classical texts bother to record four values instead of one.

We have written about this framework at greater length in our guides to Dravya Guna and Vagbhata's food properties and to rasa, virya and vipaka in the Charaka Samhita. If the six tastes themselves are new to you, start with Shadrasa, the six tastes and Vagbhata's thali rule.

A Short Glossary of the Sanskrit in This Chapter

What This Chapter Is Not

A word about how to hold this material, because a list of plants with a list of Sanskrit condition-names beside each one can be read the wrong way very easily.

What you have read above is a description of what a sixth-century compendium records. The classical indications — gulma, arsha, shwasa, prameha, kushtha and the rest — appear here only as subjects of scholarly discussion, in the register and vocabulary of the text itself. They are set down as part of the history of a classical literature, not as guidance, and no correspondence should be assumed between a classical Sanskrit disease name and any modern diagnosis.

Nor is this a formulary you can act on. The chapter gives no quantities, no durations, no contraindications by individual, and no preparation method for most of what it names. Classical practice supplies those from other chapters and other books entirely, and a qualified practitioner supplies the judgement that decides whether any of it applies to a particular person at all. The Ashtanga Hridaya was written for physicians who had already trained for years before they reached chapter 6.

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