Witnessed by: Ayurveda

Red coral (Corallium rubrum), of the Coralliidae (Anthozoa) family. A colonial anthozoan of Mediterranean rock, its polyps building a branching red skeleton; the drug is that skeleton; native range: rocky shaded walls and caves of the Mediterranean and the neighbouring eastern Atlantic, from shallow water to several hundred metres. Globally recognized as pravāla, vidruma in Sanskrit, moonga in Hindi, and red coral, precious coral in English. The part used is the calcareous skeleton — purified, then calcined to bhasma (pravala bhasma), or levigated to pravala pishti. Hard, dense, branching red to deep-pink stony twigs, matt when raw and glassy when polished; calcined it yields a light, fine, dull-white to pale-pink ash without taste or grit.

In this cross-tradition database, we analyze how this substance operates across world medicine systems — tracking its traditional tastes, temperatures, tissue affinities, post-digestive effects, and planetary correspondences across Ayurveda, Unani, and Western herbalism.

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