---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: prakriti
title: Prakṛti
iast: Prakṛti
devanagari: प्रकृति
description: 'In Āyurveda, the individual psychophysical constitution fixed at conception by the doṣa configuration of the parental seed and the womb conditions, the lifelong baseline against which imbalance is measured; NOT the Sāṃkhya primordial materiality treated in dharma-foundation v0.1, NOT a quiz result, NOT something a regimen changes.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Vimānasthāna 8.95
school_scope: ayurveda
tags:
- prakriti
- constitution
- ayurveda
- school-contrast
not:
- term: 'the Sāṃkhya primordial nature (prakṛti in dharma-foundation v0.1)'
  why: 'Same word, different referent. In Sāṃkhya and in the foundation bundle, prakṛti is unmanifest primordial materiality, the source of all manifestation. In Āyurveda, prakṛti is the individual constitution: which doṣa configuration you were conceived with. Collapsing the two makes a medical baseline sound like a cosmological substance.'
  instead: 'Keep the referents apart by school. Here render prakṛti as constitution; reserve the cosmological sense for the Sāṃkhya context.'
- term: 'a quiz result'
  why: 'Online instruments assign a permanent identity label after ten questions. Classical assessment is an examination protocol (Charaka Vimānasthāna 8) covering build, digestion, sleep, memory, and more, and its clinical use is as the baseline for reading vikṛti, the current deviation, not as an identity badge.'
- term: 'a changeable body state'
  why: 'Prakṛti is by definition the fixed baseline set at conception. What changes with diet, season, and conduct is vikṛti. Marketing that promises to change your prakṛti has already lost the distinction the term exists to mark.'
related:
- /concepts/dosha.md
- /concepts/vikriti.md
- /concepts/ayus.md
reception_note: 'High commercial capture via constitution quizzes. The file describes the classical concept; it does not endorse self-typing instruments and makes no clinical claims.'
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Prakṛti -- प्रकृति

**Not:** the Sāṃkhya primordial nature, a quiz result, a changeable body state

## What It Actually Means

Āyurvedic prakṛti is your constitutional signature: the proportion of vāta, pitta, and kapha established at conception, which then colors your build, digestion, temperament, disease susceptibility, and response to treatment for life. It is the baseline, not the pathology. The working pair is prakṛti against vikṛti: a physician reads the current state (vikṛti) against the constitutional norm (prakṛti), because the same measurement can be healthy for one constitution and diseased for another. This is individualized medicine stated two millennia early, and it is precisely what the one-size body-type quiz flattens. Note the school contrast: this is not the prakṛti of Sāṃkhya cosmology, the unmanifest source of the world; the two senses share a word and a root logic of primary configuration, nothing more.

## Audience Metaphor

Prakṛti is the factory calibration of an instrument. Every barometer leaves the works with its own zero-point, and an honest reading is always the needle relative to that zero, not to some universal dial. Treatment that ignores prakṛti is like recalibrating every instrument in the fleet to one factory sticker.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Vimānasthāna 8.95 on the formation and types of prakṛti -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Suśruta Saṃhitā Śārīrasthāna 4 on constitution arising at conception -- see [references/sushruta-samhita.md](../references/sushruta-samhita.md)
