Padmaka

TRADITIONAL VIEW, WITH SAFETY LIMITS

Hindi name: Padmakh

What the texts say Padmaka does

• Daha prashamana — relieves burning
• Varnya — improves complexion
• Jwaraghna — used in fever
• Chhardighna — relieves vomiting
• Raktaprasadana — improves the quality of the blood

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

Side effects and limits

A cooling heartwood in long use with no significant toxicity recorded. Like all the traded woods it reaches the market already chipped, so identity rests entirely on the supplier. Anyone pregnant, on medication or managing a diagnosed condition should speak to a doctor or a qualified practitioner first.

Avoid or ask first: No absolute contraindication is documented here. This is written deliberately rather than left blank.

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

AS THE CLASSICAL TEXTS AND THE API PRESCRIBE

The classical cooling matra, usually with chandana.

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.

Tikta, kashaya and madhura with sheeta virya and katu vipaka. It is a cooling wood and belongs with chandana and ushira rather than with the warming barks.

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.

Padmakashtha is the safer name to learn, because it carries kashtha, wood, and so cannot be mistaken for Padma the lotus.

Any reddish heartwood may be sold as Padmaka, and because the traded article is already chipped or powdered the tree cannot be checked. Prunus cerasoides is also felled for timber and firewood across its range, so the medicinal supply is a by-product of that rather than a managed one.

Prunus cerasoides is the accepted Padmaka. The name is often confused with Padma, the lotus, which is an entirely different dravya — Padmaka is the heartwood of a Himalayan cherry and has nothing to do with Nelumbo.

A WAY TO REMEMBER IT

Prunus is the classical Latin for a plum. Cerasoides means cherry-like. Padmaka means lotus-like, for the colour of the wood — and that single word is why students spend a viva explaining that it is not the lotus.

Padmaka is named in four mahakashaya of the Charaka Samhita and four ganas of the Sushruta Samhita, consistently among the cooling dravya. That is what the tradition records.

• 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.