---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: rasa
title: Rasa
iast: Rasa
devanagari: रस
description: 'In Āyurveda, the six tastes (sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, astringent) as therapeutic categories predicting the action of substances, and also the first dhātu, the nutrient fluid; NOT the aesthetic-devotional rasa folded into bhāva in bhakti-marga v0.4, NOT flavor as sensory pleasure, NOT juice generically.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Sūtrasthāna 26
school_scope: ayurveda
tags:
- rasa
- six-tastes
- pharmacology
- ayurveda
- school-contrast
not:
- term: 'the aesthetic-devotional rasa (bhakti-marga v0.4)'
  why: 'Same word, unrelated referent. In the devotional and aesthetic register rasa is relished feeling, the savored mood of art and bhakti, treated in v0.4 under bhāva. The medical rasa is a pharmacological classifier: six tastes whose detection on the tongue predicts a substances elemental composition and physiological action. School-contrast, not duplication.'
  instead: 'Render the medical rasa as taste-as-therapeutic-category and keep the school context explicit.'
- term: 'flavor as sensory pleasure'
  why: 'In the kitchen register taste is about enjoyment. In the medical register taste is diagnostic information: sweet builds and stabilizes, pungent heats and moves, astringent binds and dries. The tongue is an assay instrument before it is an organ of pleasure.'
- term: 'juice generically'
  why: 'Rasa also names the first dhātu, the nutrient fluid formed directly from digested food. The file keeps both technical senses, taste and first tissue, and lets context select; neither is juice in the loose sense.'
related:
- /concepts/guna.md
- /concepts/dhatu.md
- /concepts/agni.md
- /concepts/pitta.md
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Rasa -- रस

**Not:** the aesthetic rasa of v0.4, flavor as sensory pleasure, juice generically

## What It Actually Means

Rasa carries two linked technical senses in medicine. First, the six tastes: madhura (sweet), amla (sour), lavaṇa (salty), kaṭu (pungent), tikta (bitter), kaṣāya (astringent). Each taste is a compressed report of elemental composition, and therefore a predictor of action: the tradition derives from each taste its effect on each doṣa (sweet pacifies vāta and pitta and grows kapha; pungent does the reverse), making the tongue a first-pass pharmacology lab. Prescription balances the six across a meal and a season. Second, rasa is the first dhātu, the nutrient fluid pressed out of digested food that feeds the whole tissue chain, and the pun is deliberate: taste is where nourishment begins. Neither sense is the relished mood of poetry and devotion; that rasa lives in the aesthetic register the corpus treats in bhakti-marga v0.4.

## Audience Metaphor

A winemaker reads a barrel with one sip: acidity, sugar, tannin, salt, each detected on the tongue and each predicting what the wine will do with ten more years. The six rasas are that trained sip applied to everything edible, with the body as the cellar the prediction is for.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 26 on the six rasas and their actions on the doṣas -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 15.16 on rasa as the first dhātu -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
