Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c2.5

c2.5

This conclusion is confirmed by the chronological indications, no doubt more or less vague, given to us by the Indian tradition which places the earliest Indian medical schools of Ātreya and Suśruta at some time in the sixth century B.C., a date supported by the Vedas. This being so, and considering that we have no direct evidence of the practice of human dissection in the Hippokratic school, but know of the visit, about 400 B.C., of Ktesias to India, the alternative conclusion of a dependence of Greek anatomy on that of India cannot be simply put aside. On the other hand, there is some indirect evidence that the Hippokratics were not entirely unfamiliar with human dissection¹; and once admitting the practice of such dissection among both the early Greeks and the early Indians, the general similarity of standard in their knowledge of human anatomy may well be conceived without the hypothesis of an interdependence. In order to be able to verify a dependence of either upon the other, we require the evidence of agreement in points which are both peculiar and essential in the respective systems. It is, in part at least, with this object that the present essay on the osteology of the ancient Indians has been prepared. It presents the Indian side of the evidence with respect to that particular department of anatomy. The Greek side of it yet remains to be exhibited; and in the absence of it, as well as of my competence for the task, I have entirely abstained from complicating my subject with references to any ancient osteology other than Indian, lest the presentment of the latter should be unduly biased.