A traditional medical framework

Ayurveda is a classical Indian system of medicine with roots in the Sanskrit medical texts, and the doshas are its way of relating the elemental cosmology to the living body. The atlas describes the doshas as part of this traditional framework, noting that Ayurvedic diagnostic categories are not equivalent to those of modern biomedicine and are presented here as a cultural and historical system rather than as clinical advice.

The five elements the doshas are built from, and the wider body-map of Indian tradition, are treated under Elements and The Body respectively.