Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s2.t2.3

c6.s2.t2.3

3. In the second place, it will be shown in the next paragraph that the Traditional Recension omits all mention of the two shoulder-blades. These have their seat in the shoulder-girdle along with the collar-bones. One expects, therefore, in the enumeration of the 117 bones of the trunk, to find them mentioned in the clause respecting the collar-bones. As a fact, however, the Traditional Recension, while mentioning the two collar-bones, omits the shoulder-blades altogether. But it is noteworthy that the clause in question is worded in a very peculiar way. The Recension says: ‘two in what is called the collar-bone’ (dve akṣaka-saṃjñe).¹ The expression ‘what is called’ (saṃjñā) is not employed in connexion with any other part, or bone, of the body. Yet there is nothing in the name akṣaka, for collar-bone, that calls for the use of the phrase saṃjñā, ‘what is called.’ It suggests itself that that word saṃjñā is a false reading, and that in all probability a word expressive of the missing shoulder-blades originally stood in its place. The ordinary term for shoulder-blade is aṃsa-phalaka; but the shorter word aṃsa-ja, literally ‘shoulder-born’, or ‘issuing from the shoulder’, would not be inappropriate, and might also be used. It is significant that the Non-medical Version of the system of Ātreya employs a synonym of the latter word, *aṃsa-samudbhava*, ‘issuing from the shoulder,’ to denote the shoulder-blade (see No. 13 in § 16). It will be shown in § 33, with respect to another point, that the Non-medical Version betrays marks of having been influenced by the system of Suśruta; and it suggests itself that the author of that Version was led to the choice of the term *aṃsa-samudbhava* by the occurrence of the synonymous term *aṃsa-ja* in the statement of Suśruta. It may be suggested, therefore, that, in the latter statement, in its original form in which we may suppose it to have left the hand of Suśruta, the clause respecting the collar-bones probably ran (not *dve akṣaka-saṃjñe*, but) *dve akṣak-āṃsaje*, ‘two in the collar-bones and shoulder-blades’¹; and that the word *aṃsaje* became corrupted into *saṃjñe*.