roots of the himalayan peony (paeonia emodi royle) have been used as a traditional medicine for epilepsy since long back. in this study, hydrodistilled essential oil of the fresh roots of p. emodi, collected from western himalaya was investigated using gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (gc-fid), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (gc-ms), and nuclear magnetic resonance (nmr, 1h&13c). altogether, twenty-four constituents, forming 97.4% of the total oil composition were identified. major constituents of the essential oil were salicylaldehyde (85.5%), cis-myrtanal (4.9%), myrtenal (1.8%), trans-myrtanol (1.6%), and nopinone (1.4%). to the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed report on p. emodi root essential oil composition.