Vipāka
Vipāka · vi-pāka, “ripening, the after-effect of digestion”
Grammar: masculine noun, from vi and pāka (cooking, ripening, from the root pac, to cook): “full ripening”.
Meaning: in Āyurveda, the effect a substance takes after it has been digested, which may differ from its taste; it is known together with rasa (taste), vīrya (potency) and prabhāva (specific power).
In the scriptures: in the Agni Purāṇa, Dhanvantari teaches Suśruta about vipāka in the Āyurveda that Agnideva relates.
The rasas and the doshas. Dhanvantari teaches that the madhura (sweet), āmla (sour) and lavaṇa (salt) rasas produce śleshma and destroy vāyu; kaṭu (pungent), tikta (bitter) and kashāya (astringent) increase vāyu and destroy kapha; kaṭu, āmla and lavaṇa increase pitta; tikta, madhura and kashāya destroy pitta. These qualities, he says, belong not to the rasas themselves but to their vipāka. Substances of ushṇa-vīrya (hot potency) destroy kapha and those of śīta-vīrya (cold potency) destroy pitta; “O Suśruta, all these do their work by their own prabhāva” (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 280).
Rasa, vīrya and vipāka. In the chapter on the marks of rasa and the rest, Dhanvantari says that only the vaidya who knows the rasa, vīrya and vipāka of the oshadhis (healing plants) can protect kings and others. The madhura, āmla and lavaṇa rasas are born of Candra; kaṭu, tikta and kashāya are born of Agni. The vipāka of substances is of three kinds, kaṭu, āmla and lavaṇa; vīrya is of two kinds, śīta and ushṇa; and the prabhāva of the oshadhis cannot be told. Lavaṇa and madhura are madhura in vipāka, and the vipāka of āmla is also madhura; the vipāka of the remaining rasas is kaṭu. A substance with a special vīrya may give even the opposite result in vipāka: honey, though madhura, becomes kaṭu in vipāka (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 281).
Related terms: Rasa · Vīrya · Prabhāva · Dosha · Āyurveda
Sources
- Agni Purāṇa, Chapters 280–281