CONCEPT OF VIKARAVIGHATA BHAVA IN ROGNIDAN: A REVIEW ARTICLE

Classical Ayurvedic nosology does not treat disease as the automatic and mechanical outcome of exposure to a causative factor. Between Nidana (cause), Dosha and Dushya on one side and overt Vikara (disease) on the other, the Samhitas recognise an intervening host variable — Vikara Vighataka Bhava — that may inhibit, delay, soften or entirely prevent the expression of disease, and whose converse, Vikara Vighata Abhava, permits rapid, severe and complicated manifestation. This article undertakes a conceptual and literary review of Vikara Vighataka Bhava: its place within the broader Nidanadi Vishesha framework, its classical textual basis, the host and environmental factors traditionally held to constitute it, and its detailed, named application in the Prameha Nidana (fourth chapter of Charaka Samhita’s Nidana Sthana), where the term is very first defined in relation to the twenty varieties of Prameha.