Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t9.4

c6.s1.t9.4

3. In the original text (§ 76) the statement appears to contain two additional items, which have been omitted in the translation (§ 12). In reality these additions are merely explanatory (marginal) glosses which have been wrongly incorporated into the text. First, No. 9, in the original text, runs as follows: ‘two *maṇika*, two *pāṇika*, of the two hands.’ Here the two words *maṇika* and *pāṇika*, are simply synonyms, explanatory of each other; and either *maṇika* or *pāṇika* is the intrusive gloss, more probably, to judge from its secondary position, the latter. In the India Office MS., No. 881 (Cat. No. 2640), the word *pāṇike* is actually substituted for *maṇike*. Secondly, in No. 19, the original text has ‘two *tālūṣaka*, two *cubuka*’. Here, probably, there has occurred a misplaced insertion of the gloss cubuka. That word means ‘chin’, and probably served as a marginal gloss to explain the term hanv-asthi (No. 26). By some mischance or misunderstanding it got misplaced, and was then wrongly inserted into the text after tālūṣaka (No. 19). Both hanvasthi and tālūṣaka are very unusual terms, and the transfer of the gloss cubuka from one to the other is readily intelligible in the hands of an ignorant scribe.