Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t15.28

c6.s1.t15.28

6. In verse 89, Vijñāneśvara makes the bones amount to eighty-one, while Aparārka counts eighty. The difference arises from their counting the bones referred to in the complex term lalāṭ-ākṣi-gaṇḍa, brow-eye-cheek (No. 23 a), in two different ways. Aparārka takes the term to denote one brow, two eyes, and two cheeks, or altogether five bones, while Vijñāneśvara counts two brows, two eyes, and two cheeks, or a total of six bones. In this case, both are wrong. In the text, that complex term is not qualified by any numeral—a circumstance which indicates that but one bone is reckoned for each of the three items.¹ Hence there are no more than three bones in No. 23 a, and the total of the bones included in verse 89 is really seventy-eight. That this is the true interpretation of the text is proved by the fact that it works out the correct grand total 360, as shown in col. IV (also § 16).