Vata, Pitta, Kapha: the three doshas and the five
India counts up to three, China up to five. Both affirm the same thing: that the proportion is fixed at birth and does not change.
Many people know their dosha without knowing their element, and comparing the two systems is instructive — less for what separates them than for what they both affirm.
What the Indian system says
The founding texts — the Charaka Samhita, the Sushruta Samhita, compiled between the 5th century BCE and the 2nd century CE — describe three principles of functioning: Vata, Pitta, Kapha.
Each names a manner: movement and dryness for one, heat and transformation for the second, stability and density for the third.
The decisive point lies elsewhere. These texts distinguish prakriti, the constitution proper to a person, fixed at birth and invariable throughout life, from the state of the moment, which varies.
It is a distinction of remarkable precision, and it is exactly the one missing from the modern vocabulary of care.
What the Chinese system says
The Huangdi Neijing Su Wen, written over several centuries around the turn of our era, describes five movements rather than three principles: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water.
The framework is finer — five registers rather than three — and it adds something the Indian system formulates differently: relationships among the five. Each nourishes another and tempers a third, which makes it possible to understand why an imbalance in one place shows up elsewhere.
Acupuncture and moxibustion, which belong to this framework, have been inscribed since 2010 on UNESCO’s list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. It is a cultural recognition, not a health one — and it is precisely in that capacity that this framework interests us.
What the two systems have in common
Three things, and they matter more than their differences.
A fixed constitution. Both affirm that a proportion is established at the outset and does not change. It is neither a mood nor a state: it is a given.
A distinction between the foundation and the moment. Both separate what one is from what one is going through, which the vocabulary of skin type does not do at all.
A counsel addressed to someone. Neither gives the same recommendation to everyone. That is the very foundation of their practice.
What neither has resolved
The key.
How does one know to which constitution one belongs? Through a practitioner’s observation, through a questionnaire, through a reading of the body and behaviour.
These are excellent clues, and they share a flaw: they pass through what varies. Two practitioners may read differently; two questionnaires filled in six months apart may yield two results.
A constitution is supposed to be fixed. A method that reads it on what moves cannot produce a fixed result.
That is the only point on which there was room to progress — and it has to do with the nature of the data one starts from, not with the fineness of the framework.