पलित्य — the classical term for the greying of hair. Akala Palitya, for greying before its time.
This page describes a system of thought, not a treatment.
Radico is an Indian company making hair colour from Indian herbs, and customers who know Ayurveda ask us what the classical texts actually say about greying. We would rather answer accurately than approximately. So what follows is the Ayurvedic account of Palitya as the Samhitas give it — with the Sanskrit terms kept, the sources named, and the disagreements between authors left in rather than smoothed over.
The terms used on this page
Kesha
The hair of the head
Palitya
Greying of the hair
Akala Palitya
Greying before its time; akala means untimely
Dosha
The three functional principles: Vata, Pitta, Kapha
Bhrajaka Pitta
The subdosha of Pitta seated in the skin
Dhatu
Tissue. Seven are counted, formed in sequence
Asthi Dhatu
The fifth dhatu, bone tissue
Mala
A by-product of a dhatu’s formation
Upadhatu
A secondary tissue arising from a dhatu
Samprapti
The sequence by which a disorder comes about
Prakriti
Individual constitution, fixed at birth
Keshya
The classical category of substances good for hair
One
Where hair sits in the body
In the classical model, Kesha is not treated as a structure in its own right. It is downstream of something else — and where exactly it sits is a point on which the classical authors do not agree.
How the classical authors classify Kesha
Author
Classification
What that implies
Charaka
Mala of Asthi Dhatu
A by-product of bone tissue formation
Sharngdhara
Upadhatu
A secondary tissue rather than a by-product
Sources differ further on whether the parent tissue is Asthi or Majja, the marrow. We mention the disagreement rather than picking a side, because a page that presents the classical literature as one settled voice is misrepresenting it. The Samhitas were written by different authors in different centuries, and they argue.
What mala means here
The word is usually rendered as “waste”, which in English carries a dismissiveness the Sanskrit does not. A mala is what a tissue produces in the course of forming itself — and because it is produced by that process, its condition is read as a report on it.
This is the whole reason hair matters diagnostically in Ayurveda. Hair is not important because it is hair. It is important because it is a window onto Asthi Dhatu, and through Asthi onto the entire chain of tissue formation that precedes it.
The classical texts follow that logic consistently. Asthi Pradoshaja Vikara — disorders arising from vitiated bone tissue — are described as manifesting in Kesha, in Loma (body hair), in Smashru (beard), and in Nakha (nails). Degeneration of Asthi Dhatu, Asthi Kshaya, is linked to Kesha Prapatana, the falling of hair.
Nourishment reaches Kesha through the Kitta Bhaga, the residual portion of Ahara Rasa at the stage where Asthi Dhatu is formed. Hair is fed by what is left over from making bone. If that stage of the chain is disordered, the texts hold, hair is where you will see it.
One further relationship the texts insist on: Asthi Dhatu is the seat of Vata. Under the principle of Ashraya-Ashrayi Bhava — the relationship between a dosha and the tissue it resides in — Vata dwells in bone. This is why Vata aggravation figures so prominently in the pathology of hair disorders, including in the account of Palitya that follows.
The three doshas, briefly
For readers coming to this without the background: the classical model builds the body from five elements, which combine in pairs into three functional principles.
Ether and air give Vata; fire and water give Pitta; water and earth give Kapha.
And how the texts describe hair by constitution
Constitution
Hair as the texts describe it
Vatala Purusha
Dry, sparse hair
Pittala Purusha
Prone to early greying and to balding
Shleshmala Purusha
Thick, curly, strong hair
Charaka further describes soft, lustrous, silky black hair among the signs of a long and healthy life — hair as an indicator rather than an ornament.
Pitta is the dosha of transformation, and of colour. That it should be the one implicated in the loss of colour from hair follows directly, and it is where the account of Palitya begins.
Two
How the texts say greying comes about
Samprapti is the term for the sequence by which a disorder arises — not its cause alone, but the route it travels. Sushruta gives the most specific account of Palitya, in Nidana Sthana 13, and it is worth following step by step, because the logic of the chain is the interesting part.
Nidana
The causes are emotional and behavioural
Krodha — anger. Shoka — grief. Shrama — exertion or fatigue. The chain does not begin at the scalp. It begins with how a person has been living.
Step one
Pitta is aggravated, and heat rises
These causes provoke Pitta, increasing Pittoshma — the heat proper to Pitta — and with it Shariroshma, the heat of the body as a whole.
Step two
Vata carries that heat to the head
Vata is aggravated by the same grief and exertion. Being the principle of movement, it circulates the heat upward to Shiras, the head. The heat is not generated where the damage appears. It is transported there.
Step three
Local Kapha is disturbed
Shiras is a principal seat of Kapha. The arriving heat vitiates Sthanika Kapha, the Kapha resident there — so all three doshas are now involved, which is why the classifications that follow allow for combinations.
Step four
The doshas settle in the follicle
The disturbed Tridosha lodge in the Romakupa, the hair follicle. This localisation has its own name: Sthanasanshraya, the taking of a seat. In the classical model a disorder becomes a disorder at the moment it settles somewhere.
Step five
Bhrajaka Pitta is vitiated
Settled there, the Tridosha disturb the Bhrajaka Pitta local to that site — the subdosha the texts hold responsible for giving colour to skin and hair.
Outcome
The natural colour is lost
And so Akala Palitya — untimely greying — comes about.
What the shape of this explanation tells you
Three things are worth noticing, because they are characteristic of how this system reasons.
The cause is at a distance from the effect. Anger and grief are named as origins of a change in hair colour. A model that locates the beginning of the chain in the emotional life is making a claim about the body that modern medicine does not make in those terms.
Something is lost rather than added. The final step is not the arrival of a whitening agent but the failure of a colouring one. Palitya is a subtraction.
The chain is the target. Because Samprapti describes a route, classical treatment is described as Samprapti Vighatana — breaking the chain — rather than acting on the endpoint. Which is precisely why colouring hair is not, in this system, a treatment for Palitya. It addresses the appearance at the end of the sequence and touches nothing in it.
Where the classical authors place it
Palitya is classified differently depending on which text you open, and the differences are not trivial — they reflect genuinely different views about what kind of disorder it is.
Classification across the Samhitas
Source
Classification
What it means
Charaka & Sushruta
Rasa Pradoshaja Vikara
A disorder arising from vitiation of Rasa Dhatu — the first and most fundamental tissue
Sushruta
Kshudra Roga
Among the minor disorders. “Minor” refers to prognosis, not to significance
Vagbhata
Five types by dosha
Vataja, Pittaja, Kaphaja, Dvandvaja and Tridoshaja — each with its own signs
Sharngdhara
Two types by age
Kalaja and Akalaja — greying in its time, and greying before it
Madhava Nidana
The same division, with mechanisms
Kalaja from Tridosha vitiation after a certain age; Akalaja from Shariroshma and Pitta, early
The distinction that matters most
Kalaja Palitya — greying in its own time — is not treated as a disorder in this system. It is what happens. The texts describe hair whitening among the ordinary changes of age, alongside the changes in skin and in strength, and they do not pathologise it.
Only Akalaja Palitya, greying before its time, is discussed as something with a pathology to describe. A tradition two thousand years old drew that line, and we see no reason to blur it. If your hair is greying at the age hair greys, nothing has gone wrong — in this account or in any other.
The other account, in its own words
Modern dermatology describes greying differently. Melanocytes in the hair follicle produce melanin, which is transferred into the growing shaft. With repeated hair cycles those melanocytes and their stem cell reservoir become depleted or dysfunctional, and pigment production falls. Oxidative stress within the follicle is one of the mechanisms studied in connection with that decline.
These are not the same claim in different words. One describes a subdosha seated in the skin, disturbed by heat carried from elsewhere by a principle of movement. The other describes a population of pigment cells that stops working. They arrive at the same visible outcome by reasoning that has nothing in common.
It is tempting to say that Bhrajaka Pitta “is” the melanocyte, and you will find that sentence on a great many websites. We are not going to write it. Mapping a term from one system onto a structure in another does not validate the first or explain the second. It just makes both harder to think about clearly.
Three
Bhrajaka Pitta, and the four others
A dosha is not treated as a single thing acting everywhere alike. Each is described as operating in five specific seats, with five specific functions — the subdoshas, or bhedas. For Pitta there are five, and only one of them concerns hair.
The five seats of Pitta as the classical texts locate them.
The five subdoshas of Pitta
Subdosha
Seat
Function as the texts describe it
Pachaka Pitta
Stomach and intestine
Digestion proper. The texts describe the other four as deriving from it
Ranjaka Pitta
Liver, spleen, stomach
Imparts colour to Rasa, transforming it into Rakta — ranjana means colouring
Sadhaka Pitta
Heart and head
The digestion of experience — emotion, understanding, ambition
Alochaka Pitta
The eyes
Sight. Alochana means perceiving or observing
Bhrajaka Pitta
The skin
Complexion, lustre, colour — and the sense of touch
A note on how these are usually described
You will often see Alochaka Pitta glossed as governing “the rod and cone cells of the retina”, and Ranjaka Pitta as governing “the formation of plasma and blood cells”. Those are nineteenth and twentieth century histological concepts inserted into first millennium texts.
The classical statement about Ranjaka Pitta is that it colours Rasa into Rakta. That is a claim within a system where Rasa and Rakta are the first two of seven Dhatus, formed in sequence. It is not a claim about erythropoiesis, and rendering it as one loses what the original was actually saying. We give these in the terms the texts use.
The one that concerns hair
Bhraj is a Sanskrit verbal root meaning to shine, to gleam, to be radiant. Bhrajaka Pitta is named for what it does: it makes the surface shine. Its seat is the skin, and within the skin the texts place it specifically in the Avabhasini — the outermost of the layers, the one responsible for complexion and lustre.
Three functions are attributed to it, and it is worth separating them because only the first two get discussed:
Colour and complexion. The natural colour of skin and hair is held to be its work. When it is disturbed, colour is what is lost — which is the final step of the Samprapti above.
Lustre. Not the same thing as colour. The shine of a surface, distinct from its hue.
The sense of touch. Rarely mentioned in hair-care writing, but it belongs to Bhrajaka Pitta in the classical account, and it is part of why this subdosha is treated as the one that mediates between a body and what is applied to it.
Two of the five concern colour
Ranjaka colours Rasa into Rakta. Bhrajaka colours the skin and hair. Pitta is the dosha of transformation, and in this system colour is a form of transformation — which is why a loss of colour is read as a Pitta problem rather than, say, a Vata one.
Something worth noticing about the structure
The Samprapti of Palitya begins with Krodha and Shoka — anger and grief. In this same scheme, the digestion of emotion belongs to Sadhaka Pitta. And the outcome, the loss of colour, belongs to Bhrajaka Pitta.
So the cause and the effect sit inside the same dosha, in two of its five seats. The chain is not arbitrary; it is internally consistent with how the system is built.
That is an observation about the coherence of a body of thought, not evidence that the thought is correct. A model can be beautifully consistent and still be wrong about the world. But consistency is worth noticing in a system this old, and it is the kind of thing that gets lost when Ayurveda is presented as a loose collection of herbal remedies.
Why the texts apply things to the scalp at all
There is a further function attributed to Bhrajaka Pitta that explains a good deal about Ayurvedic practice: it is described as acting on substances applied to the skin — receiving them, and transforming what is applied.
This is the classical rationale for the whole family of external treatments. Lepa, the application of a paste. Abhyanga, and Shiro Abhyanga for the head specifically. Nasya, which the texts describe as reaching the head through the nasal passages. All of them assume a surface that does something with what is placed on it, rather than merely holding it.
Which is the point at which a discussion of Palitya turns to substances — and to the classical category of things held to be good for hair.
Four
Keshya — the substances held to be good for hair
Keshya is defined in the tradition by a phrase as plain as it sounds: keshaya hitam yat tat — that which is beneficial for hair. It is a classical category, and the Samhitas name specific substances in it.
What is less often mentioned is that the category is subdivided, and the subdivisions do different work. A substance that helps hair grow is not, in this scheme, doing the same thing as one that restores its colour.
The three classes of Keshya Dravya
Class
What it is held to do
Route described
Kesha Vardhana
Promotes growth — makes hair dense and thick
—
Kesha Ranjana
Restores the natural colour of hair
Through Ranjaka Pitta and Bhrajaka Pitta
Kesha Sanjanana
Strengthening — the origin and substance of hair
Through Asthi Dhatu and Shukra Dhatu
Notice that the middle class routes through the two subdoshas from the previous section. Kesha Ranjana is described as working by way of Ranjaka Pitta, which colours Rasa into Rakta, and Bhrajaka Pitta, which colours the skin. The classification of the substances and the account of the disorder are built from the same parts.
The Kesha Ranjana list
The substances named in this class are few, and specific:
Bhringaraja — Eclipta alba
Neeli — Indigofera tinctoria
Madayantika — Lawsonia inermis
Amalaki — Emblica officinalis
Sharapunkha — Tephrosia purpurea
Indravaruni — Citrullus colocynthis
An observation we did not plan
Radico’s twenty-four shades are built on henna, indigo, amla and bhringraj. Those four do most of the work: henna and indigo carry the pigment, amla shifts the tone, bhringraj is in twenty-two of the twenty-four.
Four of the six substances the classical texts name as Kesha Ranjana are those same four plants.
We are stating that as a fact about two lists, not as a validation of either. The formula was not designed from the Samhitas — it was arrived at over four years of trial in a home laboratory, by a founder working out which plants would give which colours. That it landed where the texts had already pointed is worth recording, and worth being precise about.
The four, as the tradition names them
Sanskrit plant names are rarely arbitrary. The synonyms recorded in the nighantus — the classical materia medica — are usually descriptions, and reading them tells you what the tradition thought a plant was for.
भृङ्गराज
Bhringaraja
Eclipta alba
The nighantus record an unusual number of synonyms for this plant, and almost all of them are about hair.
Keshraja
That which governs the health of the hair
Kesharanja
That which dyes the hair
Markava
That which turns white hair black
Kuntala‑vardhana
That which increases hair in quantity and quality
Bhringa
Like the hornet — for its blackness
It is also classed as a Rasayana, and its Dhatu of action is given as Asthi — the same tissue Kesha is held to arise from.
आमलकी
Amalaki
Emblica officinalis
Also called Dhatri — the nurse, or the mother. Charaka places it at the head of the Vayasthapana group, the substances that hold age at bay.
Rasa
Madhura, Amla, Katu, Tikta, Kashaya — five of the six tastes, all but salt
Guna
Laghu, Ruksha
Virya
Sheeta — cooling
Vipaka
Madhura
Dosha
Tridoshahara — and Pitta-pacifying above all
This is the detail worth pausing on. Sour substances are normally warming in this pharmacology. Amalaki is sour and yet Sheeta — cooling — which the texts treat as a specific peculiarity of the fruit. Palitya being a disorder of heat, a cooling sour is exactly what the system would want.
मदयन्तिका
Madayantika
Lawsonia inermis — henna, mehndi
Named in the Kesha Ranjana group. The plant reaches far beyond Ayurveda — it is used across North Africa, the Levant and Persia, and its use for staining skin and hair is older than any of the texts that mention it.
Of the four, this is the one whose colour is unmistakable. Where the tradition speaks of restoring the natural colour of hair, henna does something more literal: it deposits a red-orange of its own.
नीली
Neeli
Indigofera tinctoria — indigo
The name is simply the colour: nila, blue. It appears in the Kesha Ranjana list, and it is the second herb in Neelibhringadi Taila, the classical hair oil that pairs it with bhringaraja — a combination that has been made for a very long time.
Henna and indigo together are what make a brown or a black possible. That pairing is not a modern invention; the classical formulary had already put those two plants in the same vessel.
And the ones that are not on that list
Radico uses twelve plants. Four are in the classical Kesha Ranjana group. The other eight are not, and we would rather say where each one actually stands than let the word “Ayurvedic” cover all twelve equally.
Where the other eight sit
Plant
Classical standing, as far as we can establish it
Manjistha Rubia cordifolia
A major classical dravya, but classed as Varnya (complexion-favouring) and Rakta-prasadana (blood-supporting) rather than as Keshya. It reaches hair colour through a different door.
Brahmi Bacopa monnieri
Classically Medhya — for the intellect — and a Rasayana. It appears in hair preparations in later practice rather than in the Keshya lists we have found.
Neem Azadirachta indica
Nimba is a major classical dravya, grouped under Kushtaghna and Kandughna — for skin conditions and itching. Not a Keshya in the classical sense.
Reetha Sapindus mukorossi
Arishtaka. Used as a washing agent across the subcontinent for a very long time, and named in later hair literature — but as a cleanser rather than a colour or growth herb.
Shikakai Acacia concinna
The name itself — shikai, fruit for the hair — records the use. Like reetha, it belongs to the washing tradition more than to the classical Keshya category.
Hibiscus Hibiscus rosa-sinensis
Japa. Long-standing in hair practice, particularly in the south, and widely named in later hair literature.
Methi Trigonella foenum-graecum
Methika is a classical dravya, but its classical indications are digestive and metabolic rather than for hair. In our formula it is there for what it does to the paste.
Colorless henna Cassia obovata
We have not found this plant in the classical Ayurvedic literature at all. It is native to Africa and the Middle East, and it is widely sold as “neutral henna” with an Ayurvedic label attached. The use is real and old; the classical pedigree, as far as we can establish, is not.
Why we are being this particular
“Ayurvedic” is doing an enormous amount of work in the hair care market, and most of it is doing that work loosely. A plant grown in India, or used in India, or sold by an Indian company is not thereby a classical Ayurvedic dravya.
Four of our twelve are named in the classical Kesha Ranjana group. Some of the rest are major classical dravyas in other categories. At least one has no classical standing that we can find. A reader who knows the tradition will already know this. We would rather be the company that says it than the one that hopes nobody checks.
If we have any of this wrong, we would genuinely like to know. Our laboratory address is laboratory@radicousa.com, and corrections to this page are as welcome as corrections to anything else on the site.
Five
What the tradition actually prescribes — and what we sell
Having set out the Samprapti, it is worth being specific about what follows from it. Chikitsa — treatment — in this system aims at the chain, not the endpoint. The classical approach to Palitya is accordingly not a matter of applying something to grey hair.
The limbs of classical treatment
The five limbs, in the order the tradition takes them — beginning not with the hair but with the causes. Illustration made for this page.
One
Nidana Parivarjana
Removing the causes
The first move in Ayurvedic treatment of anything is to stop doing what caused it. For Palitya that means Krodha, Shoka and Shrama — anger, grief, and overexertion. The tradition begins its treatment of greying hair by addressing how a person lives.
Two
Samshodhana
Purification
Charaka and Vagbhata both describe purificatory therapy as the means of expelling the vitiated doshas and so breaking the Samprapti. Vamana expels Pitta and Kapha upward; Virechana expels Pitta downward; Nasya works through the nasal passages, which the texts treat as the route to the head.
These are clinical procedures. They are conducted by trained practitioners, with preparation and aftercare, and they are not things to attempt from a website.
Three
Rasayana
Rejuvenation
The preventive limb. Substances classed as Rasayana — Amalaki foremost among them, and Bhringaraja — are described as slowing the changes of age. The texts recommend beginning in middle life rather than after the fact.
Four
Dinacharya and Achara Rasayana
Daily regimen, and right conduct
Sleep, diet, the timing of the day, and — in Achara Rasayana — conduct itself, treated as a rejuvenative. Given that the Samprapti begins with anger and grief, a regimen that addresses the mind is not a soft addition to the treatment. It is aimed at the first link in the chain.
Five
Bahya Chikitsa
External treatment
The limb closest to what we make. Lepa — the application of a herbal paste. Shiro Abhyanga — oiling and massage of the head, with preparations such as Neelibhringadi Taila. This is the limb that Bhrajaka Pitta is said to mediate, and the one the classical hair oils belong to.
The tradition dyed hair too
This is worth separating out, because it is easy to miss and it matters.
Alongside the treatment of Palitya, the classical literature contains preparations whose purpose is simply to colour hair.Bhaishajya Ratnavali has a section of Kesharanjana Yoga — formulations applied as lepa to the scalp and hair, for colour.
So the tradition did both. It described a pathology and a treatment for untimely greying; and it separately made preparations that put colour onto hair. It did not confuse the two, and neither will we.
Where Radico sits in this
What we make
A cosmetic hair colour, and single herbs for washing and for masks. Plant pigment is deposited on the outside of the strand. It covers grey hair, and it washes out gradually over weeks.
What we do not make
A treatment for Palitya. Nothing we sell acts on any step of the Samprapti described on this page. We do not claim it does, and a cosmetic in the United States may not.
If you are greying and it concerns you, the person to talk to is a qualified Ayurvedic physician or a dermatologist — not a hair colour company. And if you are greying at the age hair greys, the tradition itself would tell you that nothing has gone wrong.
A note on our sources
We are not Sanskritists, and we have not read the Samhitas in the original. This page is built from peer-reviewed reviews and journal articles by Ayurvedic academics who have, and who cite chapter and verse. Where those reviews disagree with one another — on whether Kesha is a mala or an upadhatu, on whether its parent tissue is Asthi or Majja — we have said so rather than picking whichever reading was tidier.
Sanskrit terms are given in common romanisation without diacritics, which is a simplification. Palitya is पलित्य; Kesha is केश.
Principal sources consulted
Kesha Sharir in Clinical Ayurveda: An In-Depth Study of Hair Anatomy. IJRAR. On Kesha as upadhatu of Asthi Dhatu and on Prakriti Parikshan.
An Insightful Analysis of Trichological Principles in Ayurveda: A Systematic Review. JAIMS, 2024. On Kesha nourishment, Asthi Pradoshaja Vikara, and hair by constitution.
Temani R. et al. An Ayurvedic Approach to Palitya (Premature Greying of Hair). AYUSHDHARA. On the Samprapti given at Sushruta Nidana Sthana 13/36–37.
Pamnani M., Murthy R., Agarwal S.K. Palitya w.s.r. to Premature Graying of Hair — An Ayurvedic Overview. AYUSHDHARA, 2022.
Meena M.S. et al. Study of Palitya (Premature Graying). IAMJ, 2014. On the classifications by Sharngdhara, Vagbhata, Yogaratnakara and Bhela.
Ayurveda Hair Formulations — A Review. JETIR, 2023. On the division of Keshya dravya into Kesha Vardhana, Kesha Ranjana and Kesha Sanjanana, and the substances listed in each.
Sharma S., Sharma O.P. A Critical Review of Amalaki (Emblica officinalis Gaertn.) in Classical Texts. Int. J. Ayur. Pharma Research, 2022. On the Rasa Panchaka of Amalaki.
Kesharanjana Yoga in Bhaishajya Ratnavali: A Review. On the classical hair-colouring preparations applied as lepa.
If we have any of this wrong, we would like to know. Write to laboratory@radicousa.com. Corrections to this page are as welcome as corrections to anything else on this site, and we will make them in public rather than quietly.
This page describes a traditional system of medicine for general interest. It is not medical advice, not a diagnosis, and not a treatment claim for any Radico product. Radico Colour Me Organic is a cosmetic hair colour. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition, including premature greying. Persistent or sudden changes in hair or scalp should be discussed with a doctor.
