Revisiting the tridosha paradigm of Ayurveda

Abstract

The tridosha paradigm is foundational to Ayurveda. Ayurveda uses it to explain life processes, classify illness states, and facilitate therapeutic choices. The paradigm has an aspect that is heuristic and practical; it has another aspect that is purely speculative and conjectural. The paper sheds light on the distinctness of these two aspects by tracing the plausible steps in the conceptual evolution of the tridosha scheme. It also proposes a reimagining of the paradigm by jettisoning the conjectures and retaining the heuristics. Sans this reimagining, the paradigm would be pseudoscientific and its use in medical decision making, unsafe and unethical.