Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t16.6

c6.s1.t16.6

Literally this means: ‘two (bones) each in the knees, cheeks, thigh-blades, and in what springs from the shoulder; also, (as) one should declare, in the collar-bones, palatal cavities, and hip-blades.’ Here the item ‘cheeks’ is utterly out of place, occurring as it does between the knees and thighs. To any one conversant with the skeletal structure it must be obvious that words meaning elbow and arm should have their place there; and there can be no doubt whatever that *kapola* is simply an ancient misreading for *kapāla*, elbow-pan.¹ Gangādhara recognized the truth, and hence in his reconstruction of the Non-medical Version (§ 19, cl. 4) he substituted the correct synonym *kūrpara*. There is another ancient misreading in the term *ūru-phalaka*, thigh-blade; for *phalaka* denotes a broad, flat bone, and is quite inappropriate as a descriptive of the thigh-bone. The true reading, of course, must be *nalaka*, which signifies a cylindrical, hollow bone, and which occurs, in this connexion, in the Medical Versions of Charaka and Bheḍa (§§ 4, 12). Very striking is the use of the otiose phrase ‘one should declare’ in the midst of a statement packed as concisely as possible with the details of a long enumeration. It clearly suggests that it is inserted as mere padding to fill up an awkward lacuna. Yājñavalkya, or whoever was the author of the Non-medical Version, must have had a defective MS. copy of the Medical Version to work with. There were false readings in it (*kapola*, *ūru-phalaka*) as well as lacunae (arms and wrist-bones). As he was unable to supply the lacunae, he had recourse to padding. The use of the curious term *aṃsa-samudbhava*, springing from the shoulder, to denote the shoulder-blade, is perhaps due to the same need of padding. For though it is not a false descriptive, it is a needlessly long substitute for the shorter terms *aṃsa-ja* or *aṃsa-phalaka*. In addition to padding, however, the author had also to make good the shortage of six bones caused by the omission of the arms and wrist-bones. This he did, as shown in § 17 (p. 48), by augmenting the number of the breast-bones and facial bones by three bones each, or a total of six bones. We have here a case of ill-instructed ‘editing’ of a medical text similar to that from which the texts of Charaka and Suśruta suffered recently at the hands of Gaṅgādhar (§§ 9, 35), and anciently at the hands of Vāgbhaṭa I (§ 40).