What is the Ashtanga Hridayam?

The Ashtanga Hridayam is a compendium of Ayurvedic medicine attributed to Vagbhata, generally dated to around the seventh century CE. With the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita it forms the brihat trayi, the three great classical texts. It is the one most widely taught in Kerala, and it is the one skincare brands cite most often, usually without a verse number.

This page describes published research and classical source material. It is not medical advice, and it is not a claim about what any product will do for your skin. WhollyKaw products are cosmetics; these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

What does the title mean?

Ashtanga means eight limbs, the eight classical divisions of Ayurvedic practice: internal medicine, paediatrics, psychiatry, ophthalmology and ENT, surgery, toxicology, rejuvenation, and reproductive medicine. Hridayam means heart, in the sense of essence or core.

So the title is something like "the essence of the eight limbs", and it describes the book's method accurately. Vagbhata was not writing new medicine. He was compressing the existing compendia, principally Charaka and Sushruta, into something teachable.

How is it organised?

Six sections, in this order:

• Sutra Sthana. Fundamentals: doshas, diet, daily and seasonal regimen, drug properties.
• Sharira Sthana. The body: embryology, anatomy, constitution.
• Nidana Sthana. Diagnosis and the aetiology of disease.
• Chikitsa Sthana. Treatment of internal conditions.
• Kalpa Siddhi Sthana. Pharmacy and the management of purificatory procedures.
• Uttara Sthana. The final and longest section, covering the specialities: paediatrics, psychiatry, ophthalmology, ENT, surgery, toxicology and the conditions of the skin.

A related work, the Ashtanga Sangraha, is attributed to the same name and covers the same ground in prose mixed with verse. The relationship between the two, and whether one or two authors called Vagbhata were involved, is a genuine scholarly question rather than a settled fact.

Where do the skin formulas sit?

Uttara Sthana chapter 32, kshudra roga pratishedha. The title translates as something close to "management of minor conditions", and the chapter is a catalogue of small superficial complaints with their preparations.

The facial conditions it names are worth listing precisely, because they are the source of a lot of loose modern copy.

Most of the chapter is lepa, pastes, not oils. Verses 16 to 23 alone carry half a dozen different paste formulas for vyanga using sandalwood, manjistha, kushta, lodhra, black sesame, mustard and tender jamun and mango leaves.

Which verses do skincare brands actually mean?

Almost always verses 27 to 30, the unnamed medicated oil that later became kumkumadi taila. Being specific about this matters more than it might seem.

Chapter 32 contains a second oil, at verses 31 and 32, with overlapping indications and an entirely different character. Its ingredient list includes purified mercury, arsenic sulphides, copper sulphate, gorochana, muscle fat and bone marrow. It is applied as abhyanga and it is of historical interest only.

So "based on Ashtanga Hridayam chapter 32" is ambiguous between a botanical oil and a heavy-metal preparation. If you are writing the copy, cite the verses. If you are reading someone else's, notice when they do not.

What do brands get wrong?

Three things, repeatedly.

• They cite the text for a name it does not contain. Kumkumadi taila is named in the Bhaishajya Ratnavali, not here. The Ashtanga Hridayam formula is unnamed.
• They describe the wrong route. Verse 30 administers the oil as nasya, through the nose. The facial application is later tradition.
• They carry the indications onto a label. This is the serious one. Repeating vyanga as "treats pigmentation" turns a classical medical description into a claim a cosmetic is not permitted to make.

Is it a medical text or a cosmetic one?

Medical, unambiguously, and this has real regulatory consequences on both sides of the world.

In India, a formula appearing in an authoritative text listed under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act can be licensed and sold as a classical Ayurvedic medicine, which is why Indian labels for these preparations can say things a Western cosmetic label cannot. That licence is jurisdictional. It does not travel with the bottle.

The same preparation sold in the United States is a cosmetic. It may not claim to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease, no matter how old or how authoritative the source. A brand that reprints its Indian manufacturer's therapeutic label for a US market has not made a translation error, it has made a regulatory one.

This is why every page in this cluster describes provenance rather than promises. Saying a formula comes from a classical text is a statement about a recipe. Repeating what the text says the recipe does is a statement about your body.

How does it relate to Charaka and Sushruta?

The Charaka Samhita is the older internal-medicine compendium; the Sushruta Samhita is the surgical one. Vagbhata drew on both and did not pretend otherwise. What the Ashtanga Hridayam adds is organisation and compression rather than new doctrine.

For anyone tracing a formula, that lineage matters practically. A preparation appearing in the Ashtanga Hridayam may well appear in an earlier form in Charaka or Sushruta, sometimes with a different ingredient list, and citing the latest source you happened to find is a common way to get the provenance wrong.

It also cuts the other way. Later compendia such as the Sharangadhara Samhita and the Bhaishajya Ratnavali restate and rename earlier formulas, which is exactly what happened with kumkumadi taila. The formula is older than its name.

What else does it say about skin?

Chapter 32 is not the only place skin appears. Uttara Sthana also covers kushtha, a broad category of skin disease, in its own chapters, and the Sutra Sthana sections on daily regimen contain the material most relevant to what we would now call routine.

That daily-regimen material is where abhyanga, oil massage, is set out as ordinary practice rather than treatment: a habit for well people, described alongside bathing, diet and sleep. If you want a classical basis for using oil on skin as routine care rather than as intervention, it is there rather than in the minor-conditions chapter.

This distinction is worth keeping. A cosmetic sits comfortably alongside a daily regimen. It sits very uncomfortably alongside a chapter of therapeutic indications.

Which translation should you read?

Several English translations circulate and they differ, sometimes substantially, in how they gloss individual drug names onto botanical species.

That variance is not a scholarly nicety. Whether chandana is read as Santalum album or Pterocarpus santalinus changes which species ends up in a pot, and one of those two is a CITES Appendix II listing whose annotation explicitly covers extracts. See sandalwood. Whether kaliya is a sandalwood or a Berberis is a similar fork.

If you are working from a translation for commercial purposes, the practical advice is to read at least two, note where they disagree on species, and treat every disagreement as a sourcing question to put to your manufacturer rather than a detail to average out.

How is it used in Kerala today?

It remains a core teaching text in Kerala's Ayurvedic tradition, which is the tradition most Western brands are buying from whether or not they know it. Kerala ashtavaidya lineages and the large Kerala manufacturers work from it directly, and a formula described as classical by a Kerala house usually means a formula appearing in a text listed under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act rather than a house recipe.

That is a genuine quality signal about provenance. It is not a quality signal about the finished product, and it is emphatically not a licence to import the therapeutic claims that come with an Indian classical medicine registration.

Why we write these. WhollyKaw makes cosmetics, and we would rather tell you what is actually known about an ingredient, including how little is known, than sell you a sentence we cannot support. If a section here reads as unenthusiastic, that is usually the evidence talking.

Related reading

This page is part of a cluster on the classical kumkumadi formula and the botanicals in it.

• What is kumkumadi taila? The formula, its two classical sources, and what the research does and does not say.
• What is a taila? Sneha paka, the decoction-and-paste method, and how doneness is judged.
• Saffron in skincare Crocin, safranal, why it costs what it does, and how it is adulterated.
• Sandalwood in skincare Santalol, and why the species on the label decides whether you need a permit.
• Manjistha in skincare Rubia cordifolia, its anthraquinones, and a thin evidence base stated plainly.
• Licorice root in skincare Glabridin and liquiritin, and the strongest research base in the formula.
• Sesame oil in skincare The taila base: fatty acid profile, lignans, and the comedogenicity question.

Everything described above concerns ingredients, methods and historical texts, not finished products, and it is included as provenance rather than as a promise. This product is a cosmetic. It has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Speak to a qualified professional about any skin concern.