Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c2.8

c2.8

Another object of the present treatise is to vindicate the true form of the osteological summaries of Charaka and Suśruta. The former is at present in imminent peril of total displacement and oblivion in favour of a well-meant but very ill-considered substitute, to which the otherwise meritorious first edition of Charaka’s Compendium by Gaṅgādhar has given general currency. But in this matter Indian medical history is only repeating itself. For, many centuries ago, the same misfortune overtook the osteological summary of Suśruta, the true form of which is now totally lost from all manuscripts owing to its supersession by a falsified substitute which gained general acceptance through the great authority, apparently, of Vāgbhaṭa I, who once held a position in India somewhat analogous to that of Galen in the mediaeval medicine of the West. At a very early period in the history of Indian Medicine, owing to the ascendancy of Neo-brahmanism, which abhorred all contact with the dead, the practice and knowledge of anatomy very rapidly declined, and concurrently anatomical manuscript texts fell into great disorder. Attempts were made from time to time to restore and edit such corrupt texts; but divorced from and uncontrolled by practical knowledge of anatomy, they could not but prove unsatisfactory. The earliest example of such an attempt which has survived is what I have called the Non-medical Version of the summary of the osteological system of Ātreya, which may be referred to the middle of the fourth century A. D. A more conspicuous example is the falsification of Suśruta’s osteological summary, under the authority of Vāgbhaṭa I, probably in the early part of the seventh century A. D.