---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: dosha
title: Doṣa
iast: Doṣa
devanagari: दोष
description: 'One of the three functional bio-regulatory principles (vāta, pitta, kapha) whose dynamic equilibrium constitutes health and whose vitiation drives disease; NOT a bodily humor, NOT a body type, NOT a personality category.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya Sūtrasthāna 1.6-7
tags:
- dosha
- tridosha
- ayurveda
- constitution
not:
- term: 'a bodily humor'
  why: 'The 19th-century mapping onto Greek humoral medicine turned doṣa into a fluid substance like bile or phlegm. A doṣa is a functional principle inferred from what it does in the body, named from the root duṣ, that which is liable to vitiate. The humor reading buries the functional logic and makes the system look like dead Galenic medicine.'
  instead: 'Render doṣa as a functional bio-regulatory principle and keep the Sanskrit term.'
- term: 'a body type'
  why: 'The quiz industry collapses doṣa into a fixed consumer identity. All three doṣas operate in every body at every moment; dominance patterns differ, and the clinically relevant question is the current deviation (vikṛti), not a static label.'
- term: 'a personality category'
  why: 'Doṣa language does describe tendencies, but reading vāta, pitta, kapha as a personality typology strips the physiological theory and reduces a medical system to a horoscope register.'
related:
- /concepts/vata.md
- /concepts/pitta.md
- /concepts/kapha.md
- /concepts/prakriti.md
- /concepts/vikriti.md
reception_note: 'High commercial capture. The term circulates through quiz funnels and product marketing as a static consumer identity. Quote-out-of-context risk is high; the file describes the principle and makes no clinical claims.'
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Doṣa -- दोष

**Not:** a bodily humor, a body type, a personality category

## What It Actually Means

Doṣa names the three regulatory principles that govern every physiological and psychological process: vāta (movement and transmission), pitta (transformation), kapha (cohesion and stability). They are not substances to be located under a microscope but functional patterns inferred from their effects, the way a physicist infers a force from acceleration. In balance they sustain the body; vitiated, they become the agents of disease, which is why the word itself carries the sense of fault-liability. Health in Āyurveda is defined through their equilibrium (sama-doṣa), and every diagnostic and therapeutic move in the system is phrased in terms of which doṣa has moved, where, and why. The three-doṣa frame is the load-bearing wall of the entire vocabulary in this bundle.

## Audience Metaphor

Think of a city that runs on three utilities: transport, power, and water-plus-masonry. None of them is a thing you can point at in one place; each is a function running through the whole city. The city fails differently depending on which utility fails. Doṣas are the utilities of the body-mind, and diagnosis is reading which grid is down.

## Citations

1. Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya Sūtrasthāna 1.6-7 on vāyu, pitta, kapha as the three doṣas -- see [references/ashtanga-hridaya.md](../references/ashtanga-hridaya.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 18.49-51 on the functions of the three doṣas -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
