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Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t18: § 24. Relation of the Medical Version to the Non-medical

Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t18

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§ 24. Relation of the Medical Version to the Non-medical

c6.s1.t18.1

1. We are now in possession of all the evidence to enable us to sum up the case concerning the relation of the two Medical Versions (§§ 4, 12) to the Non-medical.

c6.s1.t18.2

2. When the needful corrections are made in the Non-medical Version, which have been indicated in §§ 17–23, that is, when the omitted six bones of the arms and wrists are inserted, and on the other hand, the alterations, made for the purpose of correcting those omissions, are cancelled, the Non-medical Version reveals itself in all essentials to be exactly the same as the Medical Version of Charaka in the restored form given in § 7.

c6.s1.t18.3

3. But in two striking points of terminology, the Non-medical Version differs from the Medical Version, whether of Charaka or of Bheḍa. These are: first, the use of the term sthāla (No. 1 in § 16) or sūkṣma (§ 22, cl. 4 a) to signify the sockets of the teeth, where the two Medical Versions have the term ulūkhala. Secondly, its use of the term ghanāsthikā to denote the nose, which is not found in the two Medical Versions. The latter term has been a puzzle to all commentators. They simply refer to it as ‘the so-called ghana bone’ (ghana-saṃjñam-asthi), but do not attempt to explain it. But seeing that there exists a Sanskrit word ghrāṇa, or Prākrit ghāṇa, meaning ‘smelling’ or ‘nose’, it may be suggested that ghanāsthikā represents the Sanskrit word ghrāṇ-āsthikā, lit. smelling bone, which in the ordinary Prākrit would take the form ghāṇatthikā, but in the North-Western Prākrit, or the well-known Vernacular Sanskrit of those parts, which were the home of the school of Ātreya, might very well have been ghanāsthikā.

c6.s1.t18.4

4. Also, in a formal point of arrangement, the Non-medical Version differs from the two Medical Versions. In the former the phalanges are placed after the long bones (§ 22, cl. 4 b). In the Medical Versions of Charaka (§ 4) and Bheḍa (§ 12), on the other hand, they precede the long bones. The latter arrangement, it is hardly necessary to say, observes the natural and logical order of the bones.

c6.s1.t18.5

5. These differences, comparatively trifling as they are, seem to warrant the inference that the Non-medical Version is based neither on the Compendium of Charaka (i. e. ultimately of Agniveśa) nor on that of Bheḍa, but that, as suggested in § 1 (p. 4), it represents a third Medical Version which may have stood in the Compendium of another of the six pupils of Atreya, whose identity at present is unknown.

c6.s1.t18.6

6. A coincidence may be worth noting. In the existing MS. of the Bheḍa Saṃhitā the clause referring to the arms is missing (§ 13, cl. 1). Exactly the same omission is found in the Non-medical Version (§ 17, cl. 2 c). The author of that version, as has been suggested in § 21 (p. 58), must have had a defective MS. of the Medical Version to work with. The actual existence of such defective manuscripts is curiously corroborated by the MS. of the Bheḍa Saṃhitā.

Cites (2)