Katuki

TRADITIONAL VIEW, WITH SAFETY LIMITS

Hindi name: Kutki

What the texts say Katuki does

• Bhedana — breaks up hard, bound stool and expels it (purgative)
• Deepana — kindles digestion (appetiser)
• Pittarechana — purges pitta
• Jwaraghna — used in fever
• Krimighna — anthelmintic (against worms)
• Hridya — good for the heart

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

Side effects and limits

• Diarrhoea
• Abdominal cramping
• Nausea from the bitterness

Avoid or ask first: Pregnancy.; Conditions where a loose bowel would be dangerous.

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

AS THE CLASSICAL TEXTS AND THE API PRESCRIBE

Higher matra becomes virechaka; the deepana-pachana matra is the low end.

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.

A single rasa, tikta, and it is the standard example of an intensely tikta dravya. 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.

Katuki and Katurohini both build on katu and on the intense bitterness. Matsyashakala, fish-scale, describes the overlapping scales on the rhizome, which is the identifying feature.

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 a dravya where scarcity has made adulteration routine. Gentiana kurroo and other bitter Himalayan roots are substituted, and so is Helleborus niger, which is a genuinely dangerous plant to receive by mistake. Because the article is a dried bitter rhizome and most buyers judge it by taste alone, a bitter substitute passes easily.

Matched live against the GBIF backbone on 28 September 2026 at 99 per cent confidence. Picrorhiza kurroa is a closely related Himalayan species also traded as Kutki and is what much Ayurvedic literature and most commerce means by the name; the two are not always distinguished in trade. This is also the most conservation-sensitive dravya in the library so far, and that is dealt with below rather than skipped.

A WAY TO REMEMBER IT

Neopicrorhiza is the new Picrorhiza: pikros (bitter) + rhiza (root) — bitter root, which is the whole plant in two words. Scrophulariiflora means the flower looks like a Scrophularia.

Katuki is described in the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu and is named in the classical literature among the bitters and among dravya acting on pitta. That is what the tradition holds and where it is written down, not a finding about what the rhizome does in a body.

Constituents. The rhizome carries iridoid glycosides, principally picroside I and II and kutkoside, together called kutkin. These are the compounds commercial extracts are standardised to.

• 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.