Lack of Pharmacological Basis of Substitution of an Endangered Plant Group “Ashtawarga”- A Significant Ingredient of Polyherbal Formulations

Objective: Ashtawarga plants have been included among 560 plants appearing in the red list of endangered species.To overcome problem of scarcity of endangered species Department of AYUSH, Govt. of India has permitted the substitution of rare herbal drugs with available substitutes on the basis of Ayurvedic concepts. Metadata analysis has been carried out to find out the basis of substitution of the original Ashtawarga plants by similar plants.
Methods: The review on substitution of Ashtawarga plants was initiated by accumulating and analyzing the data presented on internet search engines, WHO and ancient Ayurveda texts Bhavaprakasha Nighantu, Sushruta Samhita and Charaka Samhita etc. In this review, Rasa, Guna, Virya Vipaka, Doshic (Rasapanchakas) and pharmacological actions of original Ashtawarga drugs and substitutes have been evaluated.
Result: The investigation of review indicates that only forty percent of total parameters of Rasapanchakas and pharmacological actions of Ashtawarga plants and their substitutes are similar whereas 60% of total parameters do not match with each other.
Conclusion: Our survey reflects that basis of substitution of individual herbs is neither based on pharmacological actions nor based on Ayurvedic philosophy of drug action. It seems that substitution of Ashtawarga plants is on the basis of some Guna- Karma similarities which are not clinically effective. As the Rasapanchakas are inter- related to each other, so any change in Guna-Karma property shall alter the therapeutic action of the drug. This basis of substitution has been found irrational and seems to play with the eternity and medical importance of Ayurveda at International level.

Author(s): Jaswinder Kaur Virk, Vikas Gupta, Sanjiv Kumar, Ranjit Singh and Parveen Bansal

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