Adaptogens and rasayana: two histories, from Charaka to Lazarev

The quiet kingdom — roots, polypores, mycelium. The resilience of the living, ready for every day.

Two words, two languages, two eras. Rasayana is a Sanskrit word, one of the eight branches of Ayurveda, which the Charaka Samhita describes in the first chapter of its book of treatments. Adaptogen is a Russian word, coined in 1947 in Leningrad by the pharmacologist Nikolai Lazarev. The two are often brought together, sometimes even called twins. Here we tell both histories side by side, each with its dates, its people and its plants.

Rasayana, the path of essence

Rasayana is made of rasa and ayana. Rasa is sap, juice, flavour, and in Ayurveda the first of the body's seven tissues. Ayana is the path. So rasayana reads, literally: the path of essence.

The classical treatises divide Ayurveda into eight branches, the ashtanga, and rasayana is one of them. The Charaka Samhita, a text attributed to the sage Agnivesha, reworked by Charaka in the first centuries of our era and later completed by Dridhabala, opens its book of treatments, the Chikitsa Sthana, with a long four-part chapter devoted to rasayana. The Sushruta Samhita also counts it among the eight branches.

In these texts, a rasayana is rarely a single plant. It is a preparation (a paste cooked with ghee and honey, a milk, a powder), a moment in life, a way of living.

The hut of three enclosures

The Charaka Samhita describes two ways of following a rasayana. The first, kuti praveshika, means "entering the hut". A cabin is built in a quiet place, facing east or north, surrounded by three enclosures one inside the other, sheltered from wind and noise. The person following the rasayana enters it after a preparation, and lives there for the whole course.

The second, vatatapika, means "in the wind and the sun": the rasayana is followed in ordinary life, without leaving home. The text gives it for those who cannot withdraw.

The rasayana of conduct

The same chapter describes an achara rasayana, a rasayana of conduct, which calls for no plant at all. It lies in a way of being: telling the truth, keeping away from anger, alcohol and violence, speaking gently, giving, honouring one's teachers and elders, keeping regular hours for waking and for rest, drinking milk and ghee every day. For Charaka, this conduct goes with every rasayana, and on its own it is already one.

This is probably the trait that most sets the two histories apart: rasayana takes in a whole life.

The plants of the tradition

The Charaka Samhita and the texts that followed it name many plants in their rasayana preparations. Among the best known:

• amalaki, the Indian gooseberry, at the heart of chyavanprash, the spiced jam named after the old sage Chyavana;
• guduchi, a vine India also calls amrita, after the nectar of the gods;
• ashwagandha, the root that smells of horse;
• shatavari, she of a hundred roots;
• tulsi, the holy basil India prays to every morning before drinking it;
• brahmi, the small water plant.

We pass on these ranks as the texts give them, without attributing any effect to them.

Adaptogen, a word from 1947

The other history begins in the twentieth century, in the Soviet Union. In 1947, in Leningrad, Nikolai Lazarev, a pharmacologist and toxicologist, coins the word adaptogen to name a category of substances he is studying in the laboratory. His first example is a synthetic molecule, dibazol; the plants come later.

His student Israel Brekhman then leaves for Vladivostok, to the Far Eastern branch of the Academy of Sciences. He works first on ginseng, rare and expensive, then looks in the taiga for a more plentiful root and finds it in eleutherococcus, the thorny shrub of the forests of the Russian Far East. Soviet cosmonauts were given it. In Tomsk, in Siberia, Alexander Saratikov and his team study Altai rhodiola in the 1960s.

In 1969, Brekhman and Igor Dardymov publish in English, in the Annual Review of Pharmacology, the article that makes the word known outside the USSR. Western herbalists then stretched it to plants from every continent, among them India's ashwagandha and tulsi.

Two histories side by side

Rasayana names a path, with its hut, its conduct and its seasons. Adaptogen names a laboratory category, born of a pharmacologist's hypothesis. The two words meet today on the same roots, and each keeps its own history.

In the European Union, no health claims are authorised for these plants, whether they are called adaptogens or rasayana. We tell their histories; we attribute no effect to them.

The plants of the House

Several plants these two histories have crossed are with us:

• ashwagandha, as whole-root powder, from India, from a certified organic supply chain, to simmer in warm milk;
• shatavari, as root powder, from India, from a certified organic supply chain, for the cardamom latte;
• tulsi, as dried leaves, Rama and Lemon Vana, to steep;
• brahmi, the water plant of Ayurveda;
• rhodiola, as pieces of dried root from Eastern Europe, for decoction;
• eleutherococcus, as crushed root from China, from a certified organic supply chain.

For the Soviet history in detail, see our article on adaptogenesis.

Precautions

• Pregnancy and breastfeeding: most of these plants are best avoided without the advice of a health professional.
• Ongoing treatment (thyroid, anticoagulants, immunosuppressants, diabetes, blood pressure): medical advice before starting.
• Each plant has its own precautions, detailed on its product page: ashwagandha and the thyroid or the liver, shatavari and oestrogen-sensitive conditions, for example.

When in doubt, your doctor before the plant.

Sources

• Charaka Samhita, Chikitsa Sthana, chapter 1 (Rasayana), trans. P. V. Sharma, Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1981.
• Sushruta Samhita, Sutra Sthana, chapter 1: the eight branches of Ayurveda.
• I. I. Brekhman and I. V. Dardymov, "New substances of plant origin which increase nonspecific resistance", Annual Review of Pharmacology, 1969.
• David Winston and Steven Maimes, Adaptogens, 2007: the history of the word.
• INFUSE product sheets: forms, origins and precautions.