A REVIEW ON SARA PARIKSHA OF AYURVEDA: AN IMPORTANT DETERMINANT TOOL FOR FUTURE PERSPECTIVE

The ancient system of Indian medicine (Ayurveda) has mentioned various physiological concepts; one of them is dhatu sarata. Acharya Charaka has described dashvidha aatur parikshya vishaya (ten important aspects for examination) for vaidya to enhance their knowledge. Dashvidha aatur pariksha bhava (ten-fold examination of patients) are physical constitution (prakruti), morbidity (vikruti), excellence of dushya or tissue elements (sara), compactness or tissues or organs (samhanana), measurement of body constituents (pramana), homologation (saatmya) psychic condition (satwa), power of intake and digestion of food (aaharshakti), power of performing exercise (vyayam shakti) and age (vayah) for bala pramaan. All nine except vikruti pariksha are used to assess bala of rogi and vikruti pariksha to access the bala of dosh. Sara pariksha is one component of dashvidha aatur pariksha, specifically used to examine the strength of an individual or dhatu. As Charaka stated, “Bala maan vishesh gyanartham”, means for assessment of bala. In this review article, we attempted to correlate the various dhatu sarata with modern physiological entities and to determine possible methods to assess dhatu sarata and its application by compiling the previous work done by multiple researchers.