---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: manasa-dosha
title: Mānasa-Doṣa
iast: Mānasa-Doṣa
devanagari: मानसदोष
description: 'Rajas and tamas as the two vitiating principles of the mind, with sattva as the healthy unvitiating state, the psychiatric axis of the doṣa system; NOT the three cosmological guṇas of cosmology-creation v0.7, NOT mood labels, NOT moral vices.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Sūtrasthāna 1.57
tags:
- manasa-dosha
- rajas
- tamas
- psychiatry
- ayurveda
not:
- term: 'the three cosmological guṇas (trigunas-cosmological in v0.7)'
  why: 'Cross-bundle boundary. In Sāṃkhya-derived cosmology sattva, rajas, and tamas are the three strands of primal materiality. Charaka repurposes the vocabulary medically: rajas and tamas are the two doṣas OF MIND, the things that can go wrong with it, while sattva names the healthy state and is not counted a doṣa. Same words, different theoretical role.'
  instead: 'Render rajas and tamas here as the two mental doṣas, agitation and dullness as vitiating principles, and keep the school context explicit.'
- term: 'mood labels'
  why: 'Rajas is not being energetic and tamas is not being tired. They are pathogenic principles whose vitiation the texts hold responsible for desire, anger, greed, delusion, and the psychiatric presentations built from them.'
- term: 'moral vices'
  why: 'Reading rajas and tamas as sins moralizes a medical category. The frame is etiological: these are treatable derangements addressed by sattvāvajaya and conduct, not judgments of character.'
related:
- /concepts/manas.md
- /concepts/prajnaparadha.md
- /concepts/sattvavajaya.md
- /concepts/dosha.md
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Mānasa-Doṣa -- मानसदोष

**Not:** the cosmological guṇas of v0.7, mood labels, moral vices

## What It Actually Means

The three bodily doṣas get a two-membered mental counterpart. Charaka states it in the opening chapter: vāyu, pitta, and kapha are the doṣas of the body; rajas and tamas are the doṣas of the mind. Rajas vitiates as agitation, the mind driven, grasping, scattered, angry; tamas vitiates as obscuration, the mind dull, deluded, inert, unable to see or move. Sattva, the third member of the cosmological triad, is deliberately NOT a mental doṣa: it names the clear, steady state that the other two disturb, which is why the word sattva also serves Charaka as a synonym for mind at its healthiest. The clinical yield is a complete psychiatric grammar parallel to the somatic one: mental constitutions are typed by sattva-rajas-tamas dominance, mental disease is narrated as rajas or tamas vitiation, and therapy has its own arm, sattvāvajaya, aimed exactly here.

## Audience Metaphor

A radio signal has one healthy condition, clear reception, and two characteristic failures: static that drowns the signal and fade that loses it. Rajas is the static, tamas the fade, sattva the clear channel. The repair manual for the receiver is a different document from the cosmology of radio waves, even though the words overlap.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 1.57 naming rajas and tamas as the doṣas of the mind -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Śārīrasthāna 4 on mental constitutions typed by sattva, rajas, and tamas -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
