Jihvā-parīkṣā — Ayurvedic Tongue Map
Jihvā-parīkṣā — Ayurvedic Tongue Map is a Hindu / Ayurveda — jihvā-parīkṣā body system as transmitted through the lineage Jihvā-parīkṣā (tongue examination) inspects tongue body, colour, moisture, movement, and coating within Ayurvedic rogi-parīkṣā. The classical Saṃhitās support tongue examination and doshic signs, while the organ topography and three-part overlay here are a documented modern teaching synthesis associated with Vasant Lad rather than a single canonical chart.. This page lists every point in the system with sourced placements and links to cross-tradition correspondences curated for The Body Spiritual.
Open in interactive explorerPrimary sources
- Caraka Saṃhitā (P.V. Sharma (trans.), Caraka Saṃhitā, 4 vols., Chaukhamba Orientalia, 1981–1994) — Vimānasthāna 8 frames examination of patient and disease; Indriyasthāna 1 includes the tongue among observable sensorial signs. These passages support jihvā observation but do not prescribe the complete organ chart used here.
- Suśruta Saṃhitā (P.V. Sharma (trans.), Suśruta Saṃhitā, 3 vols., Chaukhamba Visvabharati, 1999–2001) — Śārīrasthāna and Sūtrasthāna discussions provide the classical anatomical and doṣa framework for examination. They do not attest this exact modern tongue-to-organ projection as a canonical diagram.
- Vasant Lad, Ayurveda: The Science of Self-Healing (2nd ed., Lotus Press, 1984; revised editions in circulation) — Modern Ayurvedic teaching associated with Lad uses a tongue chart linking front, central, and rear areas with chest, abdominal, and lower-abdominal organ regions.
- The Ayurvedic Institute, Ayurvedic Tongue Diagnosis: Identify Organ Health & Dosha Imbalances (Online article, 25 August 2021) — Lad-associated institutional teaching: front third relates to lungs and heart, central third to liver, spleen, stomach, and pancreas, and rear third to small intestine and colon.
- Ralph Steuernagel, Tongue diagnostics in Ayurveda (Ayurveda Medizin online article, 6 July 2016 (modified 18 April 2022)) — Documents a three-third convention of posterior Vāta, middle Pitta, anterior Kapha, and explicitly states that a classical organ topography has not been handed down in writing.
Known lineage variants
- The classical Saṃhitās describe jihvā examination and doṣa-related tongue qualities, but the full tongue-to-organ topography is not a single diagram attested in Caraka or Suśruta. Organ sub-regions are therefore represented as a medium-fidelity modern teaching synthesis, chiefly the Lad-associated chart.
- The best-attested modern three-third direction used here is posterior Vāta, middle Pitta, and anterior Kapha, as documented by Steuernagel. The assignment brief supplied the conflicting posterior Kapha, middle Pitta, anterior Vāta ordering; both variants are retained here rather than silently collapsing the disagreement.
- The tongue is rendered as a schematic inset inside the mouth/head region of the front-view body silhouette (y approximately 0.13–0.22), not as a literal full-size tongue. The organ and doṣa zones overlap by design so the visual pairing can be compared with the companion TCM tongue-map treatment; this is an editorial projection, not a claim that the texts locate organs in the cranial silhouette.
- The front-view inset does not encode a patient's left/right mirror-reading procedure. Bilateral organ labels such as lungs and kidneys are kept bilateral rather than assigning a clinical laterality to the x coordinate.
Related systems
No other systems share this tradition label.