Charaka Samhita
Caraka Samhita
Disease results from imbalance among three bodily forces, vata, pitta, and kapha, and treatment must restore their balance through diet, regimen, and medicine tailored to the individual patient rather than applied as a fixed formula.
- disease as imbalance among three bodily forces (doshas)
- individualized diagnosis over fixed formulas
- layered authorship: Atreya to Agnivesha to Charaka to Dridhabala
- early codification of physicians' professional ethics
The foundational treatise of Ayurvedic internal medicine, structured in eight sections covering physiology, pathology, diagnosis, pharmacology, and the ethics of the physician. Tradition holds it to be Charaka's redaction of an earlier, now-lost work by Agnivesha, itself derived from the sage Punarvasu Atreya's teaching, with a further later redaction completed by Dridhabala; this layered authorship, and the text's own uncertain place of composition, are acknowledged rather than resolved by scholars. It insists a physician examine the whole patient and context, not the disease in isolation, and states an early code of professional medical ethics.
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