Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t19: § 25. General Conclusions

Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t19

Language
English

§ 25. General Conclusions

c6.s1.t19.1

The principal results of the investigation in the preceding paragraphs may now be summarized as follows:

c6.s1.t19.2

1. In the Medical and Non-medical Versions we possess three independent presentments of the doctrine of Ātreya concerning the skeleton, transmitted, probably, by three members of his school. To two of these members, Agniveśa and Bheḍa, the two Medical Versions professedly are due. Agniveśa’s Version we possess only as contained in the Compendium of Charaka, but that Charaka introduced no material change into it, is proved by its close agreement with the Version of Bheḍa. The name of the third member, on whose presentment of Ātreya’s system the Non-medical Version probably is based, is not known, neither its reputed author Yājñavalkya, nor any of the old commentators recording any tradition on the subject.

c6.s1.t19.3

2. The text of the statement on the skeleton has not been preserved in a quite perfect condition in any of the three Versions. Several of the corruptions now found in them, e. g. the misplacement of No. 19, palatal cavities (tālūṣaka in §§ 4, 12, or No. 15 in § 16), are of a very ancient date, going back at least to the fourth century A. D., seeing that they appear in the Law-book of Yājñavalkya which belongs to that century (§ 14). Fortunately (as may be seen by comparing § 4 with § 7), with the exception of one, none of these corruptions is of any great importance. Being clerical errors of misplacement or duplication they merely affect the external form of the statement. The single exception which affects the substance of the statement is the error concerning the number of the wrist-bones (maṇika), which is said to be two instead of four (No. 9 in §§ 4, 12). That there existed in the medical manuscripts, in this particular place, a more or less serious corruption of the text from a very early date, is shown by the fact that in the fourth century A. D. Yājñavalkya, in preparing his Law-book, apparently was unable to make anything of the medical text which was available to him, and thus came to omit from his Non-medical Version all mention of the wrist-bones. Nevertheless, as will be shown in § 52, with a little attention to the actual structure of the skeleton, it is easy enough to detect and remedy the error. As has been shown in § 23 (p. 63), the error was detected and corrected by the unknown author of the ‘Anatomy’; and it is one of the merits of Gaṅgādhar’s edition of the Compendium of Charaka, that in his otherwise much misconceived reconstruction of Charaka’s Medical Version (§ 8), he made the number of the wrist-bones to be four.¹

c6.s1.t19.4

¹ Possibly Gaṅgādhar may have been acquainted with the anonymous ‘Anatomy’. See also the remarks in § 78 on Gaṅgādhar’s doctrine of four wrist-bones, in his reconstruction of the Non-medical Version.

c6.s1.t19.5

NOTE.—It may be useful briefly to put together the various indications which go to prove that, in the osteological summary of Charaka, the true number of the wrist-bones was not two but four:

c6.s1.t19.6

(1) As shown in paragraph 6, the exclusion of the two aṃsa as an otiose repetition necessitates a corresponding increase in the number of wrist-bones.

c6.s1.t19.7

(2) As shown in § 52, the system of Charaka, consistently construed, requires the count of four wrist-bones.

c6.s1.t19.8

(3) As shown in § 17, that count is a necessary factor of a correct appreciation of the confusion in the Non-medical Version.

c6.s1.t19.9

(4) As shown in §§ 19 and 23, both Gaṅgādhar and the anonymous author of the ‘Anatomy’, in their attempted reconstructions, find it necessary to admit that count; and in fact, without it no intelligent and consistent reconstruction appears to be possible.

c6.s1.t19.10

Regarding the exclusion of the item *aṃsa*, as an otiose duplication, it is supported by the following circumstances:

c6.s1.t19.11

(1) The actual occurrence of the similar duplication of *jānu* (§ 6).

c6.s1.t19.12

(2) The actual omission, in the Non-medical Version, of both reduplicated words *aṃsa* and *jānu* (§§ 16, 17).

c6.s1.t19.13

(3) The exclusion of *aṃsa* in the attempted reconstruction of Gaṅgādhar (§ 9, p. 30).

c6.s1.t19.14

(4) The mention of only two bones in the shoulder, in the osteological system of the Atharva Veda (§ 43, cl. 6).

Cites (3)