0

Methodology — how this formulary was made

regulation

Source corpus and extraction

The formulations in this library were extracted from the public-domain English translations of the classical Sanskrit medical texts:

  1. Kaviraj Kunjalal Bhishagratna’s Sushruta Samhita (Calcutta, 1907–1916, three volumes) — public domain worldwide. Used in full for all Sushruta citations.
  2. Shree Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society’s Charaka Samhita (Jamnagar, 1949) — public domain. Used via the Wisdomlib HTML transcription which is internally consistent with the printed edition.
  3. Ashtanga Hridaya — partial coverage via the public-domain R. Vidyanath English commentary on archive.org and the Wisdomlib HTML.

For each cosmetology-relevant chapter we read the entire English text and identified every formulation. Cited passages are quoted verbatim from the public-domain translations. Modern measurements (g, ml) are derived using the standard Sharangadhara Purva-Khanda-1 unit conversions (1 Pala = 48 g, etc.).

What is in this library

  • 70+ recipes spanning face oils, face packs, hair oils, body abhyanga oils, foot care, oral hygiene, and the complete daily routine.
  • 120+ ingredients with Sanskrit ↔ botanical mappings, rasa-panchaka, dosha effects, classical group memberships, and safety flags.
  • 30+ classical herb groups (Mahakashayas + Ganas) with constituent ingredients.
  • 30+ units of measure with parent-child relationships and modern equivalents.
  • 20+ concept entries providing the theoretical scaffolding to read any recipe correctly.
  • 9 primary sources with full bibliographic, structural, and licensing detail.

What is NOT in this library (and why)

The original manifest catalogued ~30 source texts. We have extracted from ~6 of those. The reasons:

  1. Sanskrit-only and Hindi-only sources (Sharangadhara Madhyama Khanda, Bhavaprakasha Nighantu, Sahasrayogam, Yogaratnakara) require vision-LLM re-OCR (Claude/GPT-4V/Gemini, page-by-page) because their bundled tesseract -l san OCR is unusable. This is a separate ~$200, ~2-week task not yet performed.
  2. Copyright-restricted modern translations (K.R. Srikantha Murthy’s Ashtanga Hridaya Vols 2-3; P.V. Sharma’s Charaka and Chakradatta) are excluded from the open corpus and would need licensed access.
  3. The Bhavaprakasha Nighantu Vargas (the herb encyclopedia) are the missing piece for full ingredient pharmacology. The rasa-panchaka data on each ingredient page in this formulary is currently sourced from secondary references (P.V. Sharma’s Dravyaguna-Vijnana, the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India). For commercial / regulatory use, each ingredient should be re-verified against the original Bhavaprakasha.

Confidence tiers

Every recipe is tagged with one of five confidence levels:

  • Tier S — Single classical source, verbatim ingredient list. Production-ready.
  • Tier A — Multiple source corroboration. Production-ready with minor cross-source variations.
  • Tier B — Single citation, less corroboration. Vaidya review recommended before scaling.
  • Modernised — A classical recipe adapted for cosmetic-license compliance (e.g. Schedule-E ingredients replaced with cosmetic-acceptable substitutes). Not equivalent to the original.
  • Proposed — Plausible adaptation, not classically attested. Use only with explicit vaidya design and clinical trial.

Schedule E exclusions

India’s Drugs and Cosmetics Act Schedule E lists substances that require an Ayurvedic-drug manufacturing license, not a cosmetic license. Several classical formulations include these (lead, mercury, arsenic, antimony compounds; copper sulphate; some bhasmas).

Where a classical recipe contains a Schedule-E ingredient, we have:

  1. Preserved the verbatim original ingredient list
  2. Marked the Schedule-E ingredients with 🚫
  3. Provided a cosmetic-license-compliant adaptation alongside

The cosmetic adaptation is structurally similar but is not equivalent to the classical recipe and should be marketed transparently.

Vaidya review

Per the manifest README, vaidya verification is non-negotiable before clinical or commercial use. Every recipe in this formulary is marked vaidya_review_required: true by default. A vaidya is needed for:

  • Botanical-identity confirmation (especially for ⚠️-flagged Sanskrit names)
  • Final dose calibration for the patient population
  • Substitution validation (e.g. when commercially-extinct Astavarga herbs are replaced)
  • Safety-flag adjudication

How to use this formulary

If you are a researcher: each page cites its source down to verse number. Re-verify against the public-domain translations.

If you are a formulator: start with the Tier-S and Tier-A recipes. For each, source GACP-grade herbs from a single supplier; do small-batch pilots; verify stability over 6 months before scaling.

If you are a content creator / marketer: every recipe has its source text and verse. Citations on product pages should be specific (e.g. “per Sushruta Samhita, Chikitsa Sthana, Chapter 25, verse 20”) — vague claims like “from the ancient Ayurvedic texts” are weaker.

If you are a vaidya: this is a research starting point, not a production document. Each recipe lists ⚠️ flags you can resolve with your patient population.