Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c5.5.3

c5.5.3

for in references to the concluding portion of the Compendium, Dṛḍhabala, as a rule, is quoted by name as its author.³ It seems clear from their method of quotation that the medical writers of that period were fully aware of the exact share which Dṛḍhabala had in Charaka’s redaction of Agniveśa’s original Compendium. At a still earlier period, Mādhava, when he quotes Charaka’s redaction in his *Nidāna*, or Pathology, shows no acquaintance with the revised version of it made by Dṛḍhabala. At the present day the latter’s share in the redaction of Charaka is practically forgotten in India, and the whole work is there known simply as Charaka’s Compendium (Caraka Saṃhitā). In the present dissertation it will always (unless otherwise specified) be referred to under that name. For all practical purposes it may be understood that Charaka’s Compendium represents Ātreya’s system of medicine, as handed down by his pupil Agniveśa. At all events, this is certain in respect of the passages relating to the bones of the human body. For these passages are contained within that portion of the Compendium which is the production of Charaka himself; and the existence as early as the sixth century B.C., of the osteological system contained in them, is guaranteed by references to it in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, a Vedic work of that age (§ 42).