---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: agni
title: Agni
iast: Agni
devanagari: अग्नि
description: 'The transformative fire of the organism, a thirteen-fold system (one jāṭharāgni, five bhūtāgni, seven dhātvagni) converting food and experience into tissue, energy, and clarity at every level; NOT merely digestion, NOT metabolism as calorie arithmetic, NOT the Vedic fire deity.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Cikitsāsthāna 15
tags:
- agni
- transformation
- digestion
- ayurveda
not:
- term: 'digestion'
  why: 'Digestion is only the first station. Classical theory counts thirteen agnis: jāṭharāgni in the gut, five bhūtāgni processing the elemental fractions, and seven dhātvagni running tissue-level conversion. Reducing agni to digestion cuts off the twelve fires that make it a whole-organism principle.'
  instead: 'Render agni as the transformative fire operating at every level of the organism and keep the Sanskrit term.'
- term: 'metabolism as calorie arithmetic'
  why: 'The biomedical gloss makes agni a rate to be measured. Agni is a qualitative principle: its states (sharp, mild, irregular, balanced) predict what a given body can transform without producing āma, and treatment is phrased as tending the fire, not counting its output.'
- term: 'the Vedic fire deity'
  why: 'Same word, different register. The deity Agni of the Veda receives oblations; the Āyurvedic agni is a physiological principle. The bundle treats only the medical referent.'
related:
- /concepts/ama.md
- /concepts/dhatu.md
- /concepts/pitta.md
- /concepts/ojas.md
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Agni -- अग्नि

**Not:** digestion, metabolism as calorie arithmetic, the Vedic fire deity

## What It Actually Means

Agni is the fire that turns other into self. Food, sensation, even information arrive as foreign material; agni is the graded system of conversions that transforms them into tissue, energy, immunity, and understanding. The gut fire (jāṭharāgni) leads: classical texts make it the master switch on which the other twelve depend. Five elemental fires (bhūtāgni) refine the digested material; seven tissue fires (dhātvagni) govern the sequential building of each dhātu from the previous one. Health tracks the state of agni: balanced (sama) fire builds clean tissue, while sharp, mild, or irregular fire leaves the job half-done, and the half-done residue is āma, the starting point of most pathology. This is why the tradition calls disease the child of weakened fire and treats the fire before the symptom.

## Audience Metaphor

A pottery works with one great kiln and a line of smaller finishing kilns. If the great kiln underfires, every piece down the line carries hidden damp, and no amount of glazing fixes clay that never cured. Agni is the kiln-line of the body, and āma is the damp that rides through when any kiln runs cool.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 15 on jāṭharāgni, bhūtāgni, and dhātvagni -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 27 on the primacy of the digestive fire -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
