Ashoka

TRADITIONAL VIEW, WITH SAFETY LIMITS

What the texts say Ashoka does

• Garbhashaya shodhana — cleanses the uterus
• Raktastambhana — checks bleeding (haemostatic)
• Vedanasthapana — relieves pain
• Varnya — improves complexion
• Grahi — digestive that absorbs excess fluid and binds the stool

What the evidence says. Traditional use is extensive and long recorded. Modern clinical evidence is limited.

Side effects and limits

• Digestive upset
• Constipation from the tannins

Avoid or ask first: Pregnancy.

A traditional classification, not a recommendation. The full safety record is below.

AS THE CLASSICAL TEXTS AND THE API PRESCRIBE

Ashokarishta is the usual form. Confirm the bark — Polyalthia longifolia is widely substituted.

Reported from Sharangadhara Samhita and the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India. Laisha states what the texts prescribe; it does not recommend. No quantity here is adjusted for a particular person — not for agni, koshtha, bala, age, pregnancy, kidney or liver function, or anything already being taken.

Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India, Part I

Saraca asoca bark is widely adulterated with Polyalthia longifolia and Bauhinia species. Transverse-section microscopy of the bark is the practical identity test; the market substitutes are not close on section.

These are the marker and the identity test for this dravya, and they are not a test Laisha has run on anything. Laisha does not state the numeric limits here: the assay, ash and extractive figures must be read from the current edition of the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India, because a wrong limit printed here is a number a laboratory would act on. The entries in this library that DO carry figures carry them because each one was checked.

Kashaya and tikta with sheeta virya and katu vipaka.

These are the actions the classical texts record. They are statements about what the tradition holds, and this library does not restate them as findings about a human body.

Tamrapallava, copper-leaved, names the young foliage, which hangs in limp coppery bunches and is the surest way to know the tree. Hemapushpa and Madhupushpa both describe the dense orange flower heads.

Rasa, guna, virya, vipaka and karma are recorded as the classical texts give them, with the text and section named so a student can open the book and check. Where an exact chapter and verse could not be confirmed, this library names the section rather than inventing a number.

This is the most consequential tree-identity error in India. The tree planted along roads and in gardens and universally called ashoka is Polyalthia longifolia, a tall narrow conifer-shaped tree of the Annonaceae — an entirely different family with no medicinal relation. Real Saraca asoca is a spreading understorey tree with coppery drooping young leaves and dense orange flower heads. Because Ashokarishta is made in enormous quantity and wild Saraca is vulnerable, bark of other trees including Polyalthia and Shorea robusta is substituted. A student should be able to tell the two trees apart at a glance, and most people cannot.

Matched live against the GBIF backbone on 28 September 2026 at 99 per cent confidence. Saraca indica is a name widely but incorrectly applied to this tree in Indian literature; it belongs to a different species. The tree planted in gardens and called ashoka is very often Polyalthia longifolia, the false ashoka, an unrelated family, and that confusion is discussed below. Assessed as vulnerable in the wild.

A WAY TO REMEMBER IT

Saraca honours the Sanskrit name; asoca is a-shoka, without-sorrow. The whole binomial is the Sanskrit name twice over.

Ashoka is described in the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu and is recorded in the classical literature as acting on the garbhashaya. That is what the tradition holds and where it is written down, not a finding about what the bark does in a body.

Constituents. The bark carries tannins, catechol and flavonoids including glycosides of quercetin.

• This is a study and clinical reference for practitioners and students. The matra and anupana it records are what the classical texts and the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India PRESCRIBE — Laisha reports them, it does not recommend them. They are not a prescription for any particular person, and they are not adjusted for your age, agni, koshtha, bala, pregnancy, kidney or liver function, or anything else you are already taking. Only a qualified practitioner who has examined you can do that.
• Traditional classification is recorded as what the classical texts say, with the text and the place in it named so it can be checked. It is not restated as a finding about a human body.
• Nothing here replaces a qualified Ayurvedic practitioner or a doctor.